Another Nest

 

Nope, not a hummingbird nest!

I was sitting on the ground beneath a pine tree next to the Bison Paddock, hoping to catch a red-headed house finch hanging out on the chain-link fence, when I looked up and saw a baseball stuck in the upper branches. Only on closer examination did I see that the baseball was a wasp nest.

I love how the nest is wrapped around not only the tree's branches, but even its clusters of needles. The bees are still busy building, so I expect it to get a lot bigger. I only hope the park staff don't spot it. They destroyed the last one I'd hoped to watch as it evolved.

This unusually colored iris (it looked almost brown in the early morning light) was growing in the newly refurbished Garden for the Environment. Their construction project took a surprisingly long time, so it's nice to be able to walk through the whole garden again.

Autumn Olive in Spring

This plant looked like a cross of stinging nettle, mint, and forget-me-not. It's called Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens), a member of the forget-me-not family.

A number of house finches were feeding on the mustard seeds next to the Bison Paddock fence. When I first showed up, many of the finches were hanging out on the fence, perhaps resting between forays into the mustard, but of course they all fled as soon as they realized I was interested in them.

One thing the Z8 does far better than the Lumix is catching birds in flight. The red-tailed hawk was screeching its classic call as it circled over the paddock to gain altitude.

A pair of Western bluebirds had to constantly defend their nest box against very active tree swallows.

A pair of Steller's jays swooped onto a pine branch above my head, occasionally dropped to the ground to snatch something I couldn't make out, then leaped back up into the tree.

Finally, one of the house finches obliged me by posting on the fence in the way they'd been doing when I first arrived.

The red paintbrush is still going strong at the Balboa Natural Area down near the beach. Notice how close it's growing to the coyote brush, whose roots it parasitizes. Paintbrush does have chlorophyll for photosynthesis, so it's considered a hemiparasite.

There's only one juvenile red-tail overlord at Balboa Natural Area these days. I think Marlon Bando and its (suspected) sibling flew away as they became more mature hawks.

There were at least two Allen's hummingbirds appearing to lay claim to a huge pride-of-madeira patch in Golden Gate Park at the intersection of MLK Jr. Drive and Bernice Rogers Way. They spent almost all their time chasing each other and maybe other interlopers, while countless bumblebees visited the flowers with impunity. The white-flowering bush (small-leaved myrtle, Gaudium laevigatum) was next door, as well as pretty much all over the place. 

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