Tamalpais Sunrise

 

View of Mt. Diablo from Mt. Tamalpais

I figured it would be quite dry in the woods up on Mt. Tam, but the forest duff was even crunchier than expected. The main event was setting out my trail cams once again, but I'd also hoped to find some fungi to photograph. No such luck. 

I didn't run into much traffic on the way up the mountain from Mill Valley, and  I wondered if things had gone back to their pre-tech-boom days when I'd be the only one waiting for the ranger to open the gate at 7 a.m. Nope! About a dozen cars  were already waiting at the gate when I arrived. A ranger was already there but had apprently brought the wrong key to unlock the gate. Another ranger swooped up a few minutes later to save the morning.

Sunrise Watchers

Frosty Trail

One of the highlights of the morning was hearing coyotes howling. A lone coyote carried on near Rock Spring before the sun came up, and again a little after, but got no answering calls. Farther out West Ridgecrest, though, a group of coyotes went off together. It sounded like they were somewhere out in the landscape shown above, but I never saw even one of them.

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Chain of Lakes

 

Pied-billed Grebes at South Lake

The various waterfowl in Golden Gate Park seem to be pairing up more avidly these days. The coots, pied-billed grebes, hooded mergansers, northern shovelers, and mallards -- and who can tell with the various gulls and Canada geese since they seem to like hanging out in crowds.

As I walked under chilly clouds of fog and smog this morning it seemed like the streets were a lot less birdy than usual, and it wasn't until I reached the Oak Woodland that I finally heard birdcalls in the trees. Even that happy sign of life disappeared soon after, though. On Whiskey Hill (where even the usually ubiquitous ravens were absent) I tried in vain to get a decent shot of the only bird I saw: a Nuttall's woodpecker. Then nothing more until I was just a block from home and spotted a group of red-masked parakeets hanging out on the edge of an apartment building instead of on one of their favorite neighborhood trees.

On a still-chilly bike ride afterward (with air quality steadily improving, thanks to a changing wind direction) I stopped by North Lake to check out the bird life and heard the tell-tale rustling of a gopher at work beneath a layer of fallen leaves. As I was watching the gopher, a brown creeper dropped in nearby, and following it eventually led me to a Bewick's wren that made a rare and very brief appearance in the open.

Urban Parakeets, Golden Gate Heights

Brown Creeper at North Lake

Brown Creeper Scaling a Tree

At first I thought this was the creeper again, but was pleasantly surprised (it hadn't been vocalizing at all) to see that it was a Bewick's wren. 

Bewick's Wren, Top View

This little song sparrow was hanging out near my bike and was so fearless that I couldn't help snapping a photo.

A female hooded merganser paddles past a pair of mallards at South Lake, showing how much smaller the merganser is.

I don't know if the female hooded merganser was afraid of me (and my loud, chartreuse bike jacket), or maybe just annoyed by her suitor, but after getting quite close to me she suddenly bolted and took wing, with the male right on her tail.

This Anna's hummingbird was hovering nearby after the mergies took off.

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Lakeside

 

Black-crowned Night Heron at South Lake

I cruised by North Lake to check up on the black-crowned night herons that have been hanging out along the north side of the lake for weeks, but I saw only one.  As usual, it was too far away and too well-concealed to try for a photo.

Nevertheless, I stopped riding to have a more thorough look, and in the quiet I heard a soft tap-tap-tapping nearby. A red-breasted sapsucker was working its way up a maple tree that used to be full of warblers when the tree still had leaves. It's been ages since I last saw a bird in that tree (a squirrel eating its seeds was the last critter I photographed in it), so I couldn't resist trying to snap a photo. I last saw a red-breasted sapsucker up near Golden Gate Park's Oak Woodland in late December.

Later in my ride, I saw a juvenile black-crowned night heron chasing another one around South Lake and stopped to check them out. Their frisky interlude was soon over, though, and they returned to doing what these herons seem to do best: standing absolutely still. I won't hold my breath to actually see one hunting, because they don't call 'em "night herons" for nothing. One of the youngsters did a little preening today, so I settled for that.

Red-breasted Sapsucker at North Lake
(I moved to the right to get that branch out of the foreground, only to end up with a more difficult background....)

According to All About Birds, the males and females look about the same.

Here, it's beak is pointing toward its next stop.

Big waves are still rolling in and booming against the cliffs. Still no sign of the Cliff House yellow-rumper.

Now you see it.

Now you don't.
I've always enjoyed seeing the sand paintings down here (a rake is the paintbrush), but the timing wasn't great when I was there a little before noon, when we still had a six-foot high tide at Ocean Beach.

Marlon Bando
(The Say's phoebe was posted up nearby, but I didn't try to photograph it.)

Marlon dropped in on a potential meal but came up empty this time.

Night Heron Keeping An Eye Partly Open

The other juvenile was nearby, surrounded here by flying gnats before leaping up into the branches of the storm-fallen tree.

Now gnat-free, the heron preened for a few minutes before settling down for some shut-eye.

Preening those hard-to-reach neck feathers.

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Cedar Waxwings

 

Cedar Waxing Eating Cotoneaster Berries, Sunset Parkway

I only gradually realized I'd entered cedar waxwing country. The thin, high-pitched trilling of numerous birds, an unmistakeable sound that always captures my attention right away, was masked today by traffic noise along Sunset Boulevard. I saw the birds flying back and forth across the boulevard before I heard them. The  more sturdy calls of a couple of robins cut through the traffic, but the birds I saw flying were too small and speedy to be robins.

As I looked up at a couple of birds fairly close by, I was happily surprised to see they were waxwings. They were in a difficult lighting situation, and the Lumix FZ80D had a very hard time locking in the focus. While the lens was hunting, I could see that the two waxwings were having a little game or ritual with a seed. They passed it back and forth several times, and thankfully the lens finally locked in on time to catch the final round before they both flew away.

Some of the birds were snagging cotoneaster berries on my side of the boulevard, but the bushes had been mostly picked clean, and the dappled light was atrocious for photography. Meanwhile, the bushes that were chockablock with berries were in a thin median strip between the boulevard and the southbound onramp from Lincoln Boulevard. I decided to try my luck out there despite the sparse protection, and the first Muni bus that entered the ramp gave me a friendly warning honk. Nevertheless, the spot seemed safe enough to fire off a few frames.

Not the first gooseberry flowers I've seen this season, but this good-sized bush along the Sunset Parkway was in full bloom today. A bumblebee visited several of the flowers but didn't linger at any of them, so I never got a shot.

A couple of western bluebirds were perched so cooperatively in the morning sun that I couldn't resist snapping a photo. This is the male...

...and this is the female.

Berry on the Left

Berry on the Right

The Berry-passing Game
(Apparently this is bonding and/or courting behavior.)

Made in the Shade

Tail feathers gathered up...

...and tail feathers fanned down.

Dive With A Prize

This white-crowned sparrow must have taken a cue from the waxwings to give the berries a try. As a local who's gotten good tips from tourists myself, I can relate.

Berry Pickers

Waxwing in Blue

Loading Up

Note the red waxy-looking tips on the wing feathers. They are carotenoid pigments and get their color from the berries. The yellow-tipped tail feathers are also pigmented by carotenoids.

The great blue heron was stalking from a floating perch in Metson Lake and remained unfazed when a small flock of eight Canada geese came in honking, then landed with gentle splashes.

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