Nature Where I Live: San Francisco: August 2025

House Sparrows Bickering at the Feeder

I take some solace in the fact that the fog has been brutal back in San Francisco this summer, although the schadenfreude quickly wears thin as I hunker down against Chicago's sweltering heat and humidity. We left California in mid-June, but I only experienced my first hint of a cool breeze here just two days ago. Yesterday was the last day of July, and some beautifully cool weather finally blew in. Unfortunately, it also brought down huge amounts of smoke from Canadian wildfires. Chicago's air quality suddenly became among the worst anywhere in the world.

Meanwhile, my wife is almost constantly on call with her dying mother, who has a feeding tube going into her stomach for delivery of all her medicines and nourishment, and requires the use of a cough-assist machine, a non-invasive ventilator, a suction machine, and a nebulizer delivering albuterol, to stay alive. People like to say that nature is cruel, but it's technology that creates the expectation that we should drag out our suffering for many months despite the strain on ourselves and our families.

As this difficult situation unfolds toward its inevitable conclusion, I take solace in helping out around the house, supporting the caregivers, and observing the natural world here in the "wilds" of the Chicago suburbs: I call it "The Solace of Squirrels."

The solace of squirrels and rabbits, of birds and butterflies, of trees and flowers. Of any kind of a breeze, of fireflies at night, and of long peels of sky-cracking thunder and wind-tossed trees in downpouring rain. Deep into summer now, life outside is showing its exuberance, even as a human life indoors drifts toward the unknown shore. The cycles of nature only seem trite in the presence of superficial understanding, but deep and powerful when we realize we are living in the presence and tumult of an immense and awesome power.

The Economy on Rails

Speaking of power, we are staying just a block away from these passing freight trains which are often being powered by three locomotive engines. Watching them, I can't help hearing Tom Waits singing Gun Street Girl:

"Now the rain's like gravel on an old tin roof,
And the Burlington Northern's pulling out of the world;
With a head full of bourbon and a dream in the straw;
And a Gun Street girl was the cause of it all,
A Gun Stret girl was the cause of it all."

Modern 4x5 View Camera with Old Chicago Brick Buildings

This is one of my brother-in-law's shots for his local self-portrait project. Note the extra-long cable release for the shutter.

Passing Freight Train #1

Passing Freight Train #2

Squirrrel Poised on a Large Oak Branch

The local robins will swoop down to use the bird bath, only to flare their feathers and chicken out when they spot me sitting on the deck nearby. Soon after the humans have gone indoors, however, the bath basin comes alive, hosting one or two robins and several much smaller house sparrows who have to wait their turn.

House sparrows on chain-link fence, with pink meadow phlox.

Chicago Brick
(view from the back deck)

A branch fell into the yard from the big maple tree that was planted as a sapling when my wife was born. I was about to break up the branch and put it in the trash when I realized it would make a great perch next to the bird feeder, which my in-laws have left empty for a long time but were fine with me buying a bag of seed to fill it.

This little youngster was sitting pretty in the day's last light.

Although it looks like the squirrel is trying to sneak up on the house sparrow, it was actually lying down like this (called "splooting," it's an attempt to cool down) on the fence when the bird happened to land next to it.

The squirrel still doesn't want to move, but it's not taking any chances either, now that it sees me taking an interest.

My brother-in-law was telling me about a complaint among some high-end digital photographers that the images were too clean. They wanted some grain or noise in there. I think that's fine for some subjects, or some times, but this robin for example (with a cicada in its beak), wasn't denoised at all. Compare it with the next shot below.

This shot was run through the denoise program, which takes forever on this old Macbook Pro with 16GB of RAM that I bought for this trip for $150 from my wife's school, where they were buying new computers and offering the old ones for cheap. I definitely prefer the cleaner look.

At least one of the yard bunnies likes to slip into concealment among a row of plants beneath the bird feeder, where I can only suspect it of eating fallen seeds.

These are some of the tools, bought the year before I was born, that my father-in-law was using to refurbish a beat-up bicycle.

Cottontail splooting in the grass (a kind of Splendor in the Grass).

Wasp gathering wood pulp for its nest from a weather-beaten porch railing.

Wasp Video

I saw this new neighborhood cat from the bedroom window, and it appeared to be interested in something in the neighbor's lawn. I grabbed my camera and tried to sneak up on it, but I was busted by a creaking door. The cat darted away but thankfully stopped long enough for me to snap this frame.

Some of the houses around here must have interesting spaces inside them.

With the "Feels Like" heat index north of 100 degrees, even the robins weren't in a sharing mood at the swimming pool. I had to get these shots through a window.

When the robins finally flew away, the house sparrows had their own pool party.

Incoming Storm Clouds

Heavy Weather on the Way

The cardinals almost never visit the feeder while I'm outside, but this guy swooped down to snap up a sunflower seed just long enough for me to snap up a photo.

We were sitting inside during the storm when it sounded like something heavy had dropped on the floor above us. The source of the boom remained a mystery until we learned from the evening news that there'd been an explosion at a gas station a few blocks away. The boom had been its shock wave. This helicopter gave us a bird's-eye view of the fire.

The next day at the gas station.... Those are the open backs of vending machines.

Female Cardinal Flaring Her Crest Feathers

A fledgling robin squawked as I walked past it on my way to the Y this morning, as if I were an adult bird that could give it some food. It stood absolutely still and didn't try to escape as I stood looking at it from just a few feet away. Hopefully it won't try the same thing with a passing cat! Later in the morning, the fledgling above swooped onto the cable and squawked. It must have come from the nest a couple of houses down the block. Here it's getting a blackberry treat.

Adult & Fledgling American Robins

Junior was hoping to get a bite, but its parent didn't feel like it had enough to offer and flew away to make a bigger catch. The fledgling stayed on the cable and was by itself for long stretches of time, but the adults were always on the lookout, chasing away the merlins and even a squirrel that probably never knew why it was being attacked (the robins actually ran into the squirrel to chase it out of the immediate area).

Squirrel Cowering in a Maple Tree

Junior Gets A Fat Earthworm

Wenonah, the Fledgling Robin

Wenonah was in the neighbor's yard the next day (7/26), doing much better on the camouflage front.

Wenonah, Three Days Later (7/29)

Cardinal Snags a Nightshade Fruit

Cardinal Infringing on Sparrow's Feeder

Cardinal & Three Male House Sparrows

Female House Sparrow Taking Down A Bug (Cicada?)

There's a fledgling cardinal in the neighborhood as well as the robin.

Bathing Cardinal and Fire Hydrant

Cardinal in a Catalpa

I've heard very few bluejays in the several weeks since we've been here, and only today did I finally get a good look at one. This guy paused briefly in a clearing on an oak branch before darting into the dark depths of a nearby conifer. West Nile Virus has been killing corvids for a long time in Illinois, which probably explains their low numbers in the neighborhood. The virus occasionally kills people, too, so I try to be alert to mosquitoes when I'm outside.

I suspected this cardinal was coming over to get a drink of water from the bird bath on the porch railing near where I was sitting, but after checking me out for a couple of seconds, it flew away.

The squirrel was working its way across some branches overhead when it apparently frightened a cidada into flying away. Squirrels do eat cicadas, but I haven't seen it happen myself. The big cicada bloom was last year, and I'm sure all the critters got their fill of them. After crossing from the maple to this nice wide branch on an oak, it stopped to do some grooming, giving me a chance to catch a comical pose or two.

I keep thinking I've seen the smallest possible rabbit, only to see one even smaller on another day. This little rabbit is barely taller than the grass. Baby cottontails are usually ready to leave their nest by three weeks of age and are full-grown and ready to reproduce at six months. By the way, when you lie down in the grass to take a picture at this low angle (barefoot, wearing shorts and t-shirt), aptly named no-see-ums bite like little pinpricks on your arms and legs.

Papa Feeding Baby House Sparrow

We finally got a day of temps in the 70s, but the windy air mass that brought cooler temperatures also brought so much Canadian wildfire smoke that the air here was deemed unhealthy for all persons.

On this last day of July, the wildfire smoke that traveled down from Canada smells like a campfire that's burning in the yard next door. This clouded sulfur was nectaring on joe-pye weed in the butterfly garden at the local park.