Nature Where I Live: San Francisco: Birdland!

Red-naped Sapsucker, Elk Glen Lake

I finally broke down and went birding instead of doing my usual Tuesday walk. Reports of a Red-naped Sapsucker and a Summer Tanager are what did it. My walk would have taken me right past the sapsucker, but there's no way I was going to lug my full-frame camera around on the whole walk.

Several birders also came down to view the sapsucker, and I joined them and several others later at the San Francisco Botanical Garden.

I'd gone to the SFBG to look for the summer tanager, but new reports had come in of an even more rare Yellow-green Vireo and, a little later, a Blackburnian Warbler, so I tagged along with the birding pros. I felt like a birder myself while some of us were using binoculars to look for the vireo way up in the high branches of a eucalyptus when suddenly another birder broke into the open nearby and excitedly announed to our group that he'd seen it elsewhere. Like a shot, our whole group broke into a jog to find the celebrity vireo. Even better, we all got to see it.

The blackburnian warbler, not so much. But it was still an excellent morning to be wandering around in Birdland.

I also met another photographer who recommended a DxO product for doing noise reduction. I checked it out and ended up buying DxO PureRAW 6 which works as a Lightroom plug-in. It's so much faster than Lightroom's denoise feature that I ended up using it on all the images in today's post, not just the ones shot at ISO 10000 and up.

Red-naped Sapsucker

The person who reported the summer tanager first saw it bathing in the water fountain near the SFBG entrance. It had later been seen in the company of a robin. I sat and watched the robins bathe for a while, but no tanager showed up to join the party.

In a tree near the fountain, a pair of Northern Flickers was having a noisy chit-chat.

They allowed me to watch for quite a while, keeping up the chit-chat and occasionally facing each other while never making physical contact.

A Nuttall's Woodpecker started up a different trunk on the same tree and was paid no mind by the flickers.

I finally saw a summer tanager back on the monkey's hand tree.

Unfortunately, no flowers were in bloom, so there was nothing to keep the birds interested and in one place.

I'd hoped to see a red male, but I was happy enough to spot the yellow one and add a new species to my iNaturalist observations.

Raising its crown feathers.

A Western Tanager also dropped by the monkey's hand tree.

Lookin' purty.

I'd hoped the new, rare vireo might turn up in this tree poppy where I photographed western warbling vireos last month. This time I caught a Song Sparrow snagging a seed instead.

Finally, well worth jogging for, the esteemed Yellow-green Vireo made its grand entrance.

It did play hard to get, though.

I finally got to photograph my first-of-season Orange-crowned Warbler. It snagged a tiny caterpillar from under a leaf, very near the vireo's tree.

A nearby Red-breasted Sapsucker drew me farther away from the vireo, and it ate a couple of berberis/mahonia berries. I'm surprised more birds don't go after them, as they taste good even to me.

A sign below the tree identified it as Mahonia oiwakensis, but botanists now consider the Mahonia genus to be part of Berberis.

A resident Anna's Hummingbird, meanwhile, was nectaring on its flowers and providing pollination service.

I don't think she cares whether it's called Mahonia or Berberis. Tastes just as good.

The Blackburnian warbler had been spotted in the Children's Garden, so I headed back there and stopped to watch some Pygmy Nuthatches on the prowl.

A Fox Sparrow had been kicking in the dirt on the ground but got spooked up into this brittle-looking, leafless bush.

I try to resist photographing every Townsend's Warbler I see, but sometimes resistance is futile.

Black Phoebe, looking demure on a branch above the frog pond.

This is the same bird, having come down for a drink.

The floating sticks made a nice drinking perch.

A Ruby-crowned Kinglet dropped by as I was leaving the Children's Garden.

Another Townsend's warbler got me to stop by the Schotia brachypetala on my way back to my bike.

Pygmy nuthatches were in there, too, as usual.

A Yellow-rumped Warbler also got in on the action, but was very shy and flew away after taking a quick sip of nectar.

This plant is in the legume family and reminds me of coral trees. I first encountered coral trees in Santa Barbara, and when I grasped a group of flowers to get a better look at them, a huge amount of nectar spilled out and got all over me.