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| Townsend's Warbler, Mallard Lake |
I've been out with the camera the past few days but haven't really felt like posting anything. I think I've been fighting off a bug of some kind, and it's made me feel a little jaded about blogging.
Many children at my wife's school have been staying home due to illness, and I know I'm not immune to everything that's out there despite getting flu, covid, and pneumonia jabs this fall. Still, I am feeling a little more perky today -- maybe due to the chill of walking and biking in today's brisk, 13-degree temperature drop (according to our indoor/outdoor thermometer).
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| Longboarding at Ocean Beach |
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| Sunset Dunes Park on Sunday |
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| This neighborhood hummer was making a lot of alarm calls, so I stopped to see what she was upset about. |
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| It was this guy, a scrub jay (and its pal; there were two of them on the prowl). I wonder how often jays and other corvids actually find and prey on hummingbird nests. |
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| I was desperate to spend more time using the Z8 and 180-600mm, so I trundled it over to Grandview Park. There were almost no birds around, but I was surprised to find some early-season dragonflies (probably all variegated meadowhawks). |
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| A visitor to the park saw me pointing my huge lens at something and asked what I was looking at. I told her it was this white-crowned sparrow in a bush right in front of us. I like that the lens can focus on close objects so well. |
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| I saw the mangy coyote sort of trotting along the path at Middle Lake and got my camera ready just in time for it to come out from behind the foliage and pass in front of this woman on a park bench. I shot two frames as it passed and created this single composite image. I watched as the coyote kept up its nonchalant pace to cross a nearby 4-way intersection and head over to North Lake. |
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| Meanwhile, a few golden-crowned sparrows were feeding right at my feet. This one was nibbling on cleavers (aka bedstraw, Galium aparine). |
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| Golden-crowned Sparrow, Middle Lake |
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| There were a few male and female hooded mergansers diving in Middle Lake, as well as several bufflehead and the usual mallards. |
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| I was a little surprised to see a monarch butterfly fluttering in the warm and sunny woods near the Bison Paddock yesterday. When I passed that area again on today's chilly and hazy day I wondered where it might be holed up. |
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| The Townsend's warbler was trying to ascertain the threat of a nearby human before ducking down into the creek at Mallard Lake to have a little bath. It decided not to risk it. |
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| The hummingbird had just bathed in a different part of the creek. |
Preening Hummer in Motion
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| I'm sure the handsome Townie was grateful when I finally left the area. |
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| Down next to the lake, this hermit thrush popped up to pose on a blackberry branch. |
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| The ruby-crowned kinglet was eating something on the flowers -- whether pollen or something else I couldn't tell. It would sometimes even flutter beneath the flower as if it were a not-very-graceful hummingbird. |
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| Hermit in the Holly |
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| Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Mallard Lake |
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| Sometimes hummingbirds take a flower's nectar from the base of the blossom, cheating the flower of pollination services. |
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| The yellow-rumped warbler was hiding its rump, but a field of yellow mustard flowers in the Bison Paddock took up its slack. |
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| A white-crowned sparrow uses the Bison Paddock fence as a way station. |
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| Great Egret, South Lake |
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| Another yellow-rumper, this time with yellow lichen on a willow just coming back into bud at South Lake. |
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| Yellow-rumped Warbler, South Lake |
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| I spotted the red-breasted sapsucker on the same tree as last time, but this time it didn't fly away as I got off my bike and fished out my camera. |
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