Yellow-rump Country

 

Yellow-rumped Warbler in Buckeye, SF Botanical Garden

I've been reading another book by the biochemist Nick Lane, called Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life. The principal characters in this drama aren't people, but the cells and organelles such as mitochondria that comprise our bodies. 

The intricacy of life always blows my mind. I think about the warbler in the photo above starting out as a single-celled zygote, invisible to the naked eye, now a completely put-together flying animal that swoops through tree branches and hawks after termites lifting into the sunshine's warmth. 

And of course, the guy making the photograph started out as a single-celled zygote too. Yet somehow, each of us single-celled zygotes knew how to grow ourselves into a bird or a human or any other kind of critter. Yes, DNA plays a role, but think about the intricacy and origin of DNA and your mind gets blown all over again. We do not understand how we got here. 

Yet here we are! Amazing. Such an awesome world, and it's an honor to be a living part of this deepest of all great mysteries.

I was impressed by the volume of resin being dripped out by the cones of this spruce (Picea alcoquiana) in the botanical garden.

This squirrel seemed glad to have some sunshine to sploot out in after all the rain we've been having.

A few golden-crowned sparrows were burrowed into dead leaves, also soaking up the sun.

Golden-crowned Sparrows & Western Bluebird

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Some ravens chased a red-tailed hawk across the sky.

Townsend's Warbler

Wind-ruffled Feathers

Western Bluebird with Grasshopper

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

White-crowned Sparrow

This pipevine swallowtail butterfly was flitting around the part of the garden where it was probably born. The area has since been ripped out and is being replanted, but several pipevine plants were allowed to remain. It'll be interesting to see if there's enough pipevine left to feed caterpillars in the spring.

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