Nature Where I Live: San Francisco: Gone Birdin'

Red-shouldered Hawk, Golden Gate Park

We started out with an overcast Saturday morning here in San Francisco, but it's all blue skies this afternoon. If the day had started off with blue skies, I wouldn't have gone birding at all. There's something about an overcast day that lends itself to quietly poking around lakes and gardens to observe whatever nature is up to.

Right now, one of the main things birds are up to is parents getting their fledglings up to speed so they can make it on their own. I saw several young birds following their parents around, but the parents were no longer feeding them.

The photography went well this morning, starting with a brown creeper sighting at Elk Glen Lake. I set out with the heavy Z8 and long lens in the hope of seeing one, but their arrival always seems serendipitous. I never see them when I'm looking for them. They just suddenly show up.

I didn't realize until today that creepers have a song -- one that I've heard many times without realizing what it was. (On an unrelated note, check out this song I heard on KALW this afternoon, called Bird, by the South Korean group Leenalchi.)

Master of Camouflage, Elk Glen Lake

Pause for the Cause

Brown Creeper (Certhia americana)
(Certhia comes from the Ancient Greek word kerthios, a term used by Aristotle to describe a small, insectivorous bird that lived and scurried around in trees.)

California Towhee (Melozone crissalis)

It was hard to see details with the strong backlight, and I thought this young robin might be a varied thrush (which I've seen only in December and March in SF).

Hawkeye Tree

The collared dove wasn't taking any chances. It was much lower on the tree when it first realized I'd spotted it, and it soon climbed to the top so it could make a quick getaway.

I was hoping the great blue heron would try to pull something bigger than a minnow out of Mallard Lake.

But a minnow is all it got.

Strolling through the SF Botanical Garden I followed the bird calls to this young Nuttall's woodpecker which appeared to be waiting for its mom to bring some food.

Mom showed up empty-handed.

I could tell the red-shouldered hawk had caught something, but whatever it was was out of sight in front of the bird.

I went around the other side and had to deal with the strong backlight. Here the hawk appears to be licking its chops.

But whatever it was eating was proving difficult to swallow.

The hawk struggled to break it into manageable pieces.

Nearby, a pipevine swallowtail took a nectar break at some wild radish plants.

While I was waiting for either a robin to snag a purple berry from the Tree Fuchsia, or an Allen's hummingbird to get some flower nectar from the same tree, a brown creeper caught my eye.

I was able to follow it around for a while, and a highlight was seeing it nab a spider.

Down the Hatch

Creepers like to hunt by spiraling up a tree trunk, sometimes dropping back down after reaching the top. This one was in fairly small trees and mainly worked lateral branches instead of the trunks.