Garden Walk

 

Winging It

The streets were wet as I walked down the hill to catch the 44-O'Shaughnessy bus to Glen Canyon Park this morning. The wind was up, blowing massive dark clouds across the sky. Maybe not the best day to hike over Twin Peaks from Glen Canyon to Cole Valley. Although it's a hike I've been planning to repeat for a while, I decided to wait for better weather, so I passed the bus stop and kept going down the hill to visit the S.F. Botanical Garden and Blue Heron Lake.

I saw a couple of crows in my neighbor's oak tree, then spotted this guy clinging to the topmost branches. It was biting something off the tree and eating it. Maybe leaf buds?

The parakeets often dribble a fair amount of their food, but this guy seemed to be using his feet to to keep more of it inside his mouth.

Invitation to Bees

There were so many bees on this plum tree that I wondered if the hive was nearby.

The SFBG is dominated by Anna's hummingbirds year-round, but this visiting Allen's hummingbird still found room to squeeze in.

The plant is aptly named Hummingbird Sage.

An Anna's hummingbird hits the red-flowering currant.

The pitcher's plant vines draped all over the currant and other nearby plants are still flowering like crazy (as are the ones in my yard).

Giant Coreopsis in the California Garden

A few hooded mergansers (and northern shovelers) are still around at Blue Heron Lake.

Smiling Slider

This honeybee has a good-sized pillow of pollen on its legs, collecting here from a South African species of rock rose.

I missed seeing the tulips when I entered the garden, and I couldn't resist snapping a photo when I saw them on the way out.

I'm still sort of addicted to watching the eagles and grabbed this screenshot as papa flew in with a fresh fish yesterday morning.

Unfortunately, it had only two chicks to feed. The late-bloomer wasn't able to get enough share of the food to make it.

After feeding, papa took over the chick-warming duties for a while.

When I checked the cams this morning, the two chicks were all alone at the nest. I was surprised they could take the cold for so long (over half an hour). Later in the day I caught both eagles at the nest.

This Mt. Shasta view is another of my favorite web cams to check, but it was down for several days recently. The view also tends to be so foggy and/or cloudy that you can't see anything anyway.

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