Yellow Warbler & Friends

 

Yellow Warbler in Bottlebrush, SF Botanical Garden

The birds wouldn't let me leave. I was greeted right off the bat by yellow warblers, pygmy nuthatches, chestnut-backed chickadees, and Nuttall's woodpeckers. After a few hours of roaming around the gardens, the banana I'd eaten for breakfast had burned through the Krebs cycle and proton-pumped the last molecule of ATP the starchy yellow fruit could muster. I required sustenance but was waylaid by Western tanagers on the way out to my bike.

Several chickadees were foraging in the bottlebrush flowers as well.

As was a group of pygmy nuthatches.

Nuttall's Woodpecker

Here it's using its tongue like an anteater to try to pull something out of the cracked tree bark.

It also snagged a couple of good-sized insects with its beak.

Closer crop of previous image.

American Robin, Fat & Sassy

It looked like a small bike helmet: latticed stinkhorn fungus.

A couple of red-legged frogs were still out in the open in the Children's Garden pond.

The California pipevine plants are starting to grow back, and the caterpillars are having a population boom as a result. Once colder weather sets in I'll make an effort to find some of the chrysalises in which the pupae will overwinter.

There were a few Western flycatchers around.

I finally realized they are the ones who have a call that's like a whistle meant to get your attention.

Another flycatcher: Black Phoebe

Squirrels were busy eating dogwood nuts.

At least one had opted for yew berries instead.

Several Western tanagers were also going after the yew berries.

At least half a dozen robins were bathing in this little creek, along with one Steller's jay and very shy Western tanagers.

I saw a couple of Townsend's warblers, but they were playing hard-to-get.

I probably spent half an hour waiting for the Wilson's warbler to be relatively still and in the open long enough to get a photo as it foraged in a dense buckeye tree on the other side of the fence around the new nursery.

Steller's Bather

I actually spooked a mouse to dart across a stretch of open space when I approached a log to sit on.

The red-shouldered hawk didn't see it.

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