A Walk In The Park

 

Green Heron Fanning A Wing, Lily Pond

Today's walk took me through some nice enough areas, including Windsor Terrace, the Garden for the Environment, Parnassas Heights, Cole Valley, and the Haight, but I couldn't help looking forward to getting past all those urban treasures and into perhaps our greatest urban treasure, Golden Gate Park.

Scrub Jay with Acorn, Oak Woodland

Steller's Jay Collecting Acorns

Steller's Jay Loading Up

Bonanza of Miner's Lettuce

Dewy Goodness

The foxglove in this spot has been blooming for at least a couple of weeks, and today I finally stopped to photograph it, taking a knee to get a good angle, and leaving with a muddy trickle running down my shin.

There were mallards, ring-necked ducks, Canada geese, and a hooded merganser at one end of the Lily Pond. The green heron had the other side to itself.

Cresting its Crown Feathers While Scratching an Itch

When I saw it fan its right-wing feathers, I switched to vertical format in anticipation of it doing the same with its left wing, and after making me wait quite a while, it finally did oblige. The frame at the top of the post was my last shot of the bird for today.

Reflecting Curve

Preening Beauty

Screaming Beauty

Is Screaming Beauty Giving Me the Bird?

Townsend's Warbler with Malformed Beak

Brown Creeper Goes Upside-Down

Brown Creeper on Oak, Whiskey Hill

This seemed like a comparatively chubby squirrel. Chubby in a healthy way, that is.

A little farther up the Whiskey Hill trail: attitude. (My neighbor who was a long-time gardner in Golden Gate Park uses that name for the hill on the edge of the park between Lincoln Way and MLK Jr. Drive, just south of the park's Maintenance Yard.)

I saw my first monarch of the season just west of North Lake today. It was fluttering kind of far away from me, but I went looking for it anyway. I thought it was gone for good when it fluttered south, but hope was renewed when it turned around upon reaching a group of small children. It flew toward me in loops and circles, finally coming into camera range and landing on a branch to rest in the sun just long enough for me to fire off a single frame.

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Sunny Day

 

Say's Phoebe, Balboa Natural Area

What a pleasure it's been to be outside on a sunny and relatively warm day again. It feels like it's been a while.

My morning walk took me past the band-tailed pigeon tree in Forest Hill, and it appears that the birds are in fact nesting there. Depending on when they laid their egg(s), a chick could hatch as early as late next week. I only wish I could get a better view through all the sticks and branches.

Street Magnolia, Forest Hill

Bison in the Sun

Say's Phoebe With Vertical Grip

The sunny day gave me a 1/2000th-sec. exposure, but even that wasn't fast enough to freeze the phoebe's wing feathers. Many of the excellent freeze-flight shots I've seen on Flickr are done at 1/8000th-sec, which is not an option on the FZ80D....

Black turnstones flee an incoming wave in front of Sutro Baths. (Click to view larger.)

In addition to the black turnstones, several surfbirds were also foraging on the rocks today, while a group of nine willets foraged in the sand nearby.

Bando had the Great Highway to himself.

Lamp Post Leaper

Until today, I hadn't seen any black-crowned night herons since the rains arrived at the beginning of the month. This juvenile was snoozing in a redwood at South Lake and only briefly opened its eyes, probably to make sure the human in the neon-yellow bike windbreaker wasn't a threat.

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Wired

 

American Robin on a Wire

The robin and the hummingbird below it were wired by virtue of their chosen perches, but were absolutely serene in their demeanors. Neither showed any sign of nervousness at my approach, or even when I dug a camera out of my knapsack. There was none of the usual head movement back-and-forth, no side-eye to check the sky and/or the human below, and certainly no chirping of any kind. Both birds calmly gripped their respective wires and remained still, without so much as preening a feather.

Female Anna's Hummingbird

Calla Lily Leaves After Today's Light Rain

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Red-naped Sapsucker

 

Red-naped Sapsucker, Elk Glen Lake

Unless I'm mistaken about the ID, this is my first sighting of a red-naped sapsucker. It was in the same oak tree that hosted a similar-looking yellow-bellied sapsucker back in November. This guy was quite small and eager to elude my lens, so I only got a couple of decent shots, and at some point I completely lost him. As I circled the tree I never knew if he was well-hidden or if he'd already flown away. 

Another first, but just first-of-season, on Monday's hike was an Allen's hummingbird hovering over the little stream on the east end of Mallard Lake. I only got a couple shots off before the only other person anywhere near me burst on the scene and frightened off the hummer. I waited in vain for it to come back to give me another chance, but gave up to continue my walk after about ten minutes.

The next surprise was finding what I believe to be a couple of ripening papaya fruits. I used to climb our backyard papaya tree to pick the fruit when I was 4 or 5 years old, living on Oahu. Papaya trees were so much taller back then....

White-crowned Sparrow & California Lilac, Sunset Parkway
(The sparrow climbed the blooming Ceanothus bush from the ground up, but in this shot he is actually perched on a well-placed wooden stake.)

It seems like the red-shouldered hawks have been busy lately, frequently calling out to each other and gathering nest material. Back when The Birds of Golden Gate Park came out in 1930, these guys were called red-bellied hawks and were said to be very rare.

A well-camouflaged mallard hen at Mallard Lake.

By the time I remembered to increase the shutter speed from its 1/250th-sec. setting, someone came along and frightened the hummer away. I only include this shot to recall my first Allen's hummingbird of the season. I believe that's all watercress in the stream.

I'll be looking forward to seeing if they ripen all the way to yellow before being snatched by someone or some critter.

Red-shouldered Hawk in Cypress, Elk Glen Lake

He's definitely got red on his nape, but I didn't see any other pictures showing that red swash behind the eye.

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Outcrop Bluebird

 

Western Bluebird, Rocky Outcrop Park

Murphy's Law of Photography strikes again. When my wife and I took a walk around the neighborhood Sunday afternoon I decided to leave my camera at home. Naturally, we got a great view of a red-tailed hawk taking apart its prey on a picturesque tree stump at Grandview Park. It would have made a great urban wildlife shot, with the park and stump in the foreground and the Outer Sunset in the background.

As I was grieving over having missed this photo opportunity, the hawk took off with the prey animal and a foot-long tuft of grass dangling from its talons. As it rose in the sky it called out "Keeeeeer!" and soared over a nearby  grove of eucalyptus trees, a row of houses, and the Rocky Outcrop Park, then suddenly tucked into a dive and made a beeline back to the stump. 

That's when another hawk began to call out in response. The new red-tail soared into view and then it, too, tucked into a dive, then flared out its feathers to land on the stump right next to the first hawk, where it took possession of the prey and flew away with it, the extra tuft of grass still dangling like a kite-tail.

Thankfully, the rest of the walk was uneventful....

Later in the day I tried to get redemption by going back out to look for the hawks with my camera. I figured it was an incalculable longshot, but I took heart when I saw both of the hawks soaring above the houses at the top of the Rocky Outcrop. They circled a little bit, but soon glided out of sight to the south, taking my hopes with them.

While watching the hawks I'd also heard the light whistles of a Western bluebird  nearby, and I soon found a male and female hunting for insects on the ground from their perches high on a light post with a No Parking sign attached to it. Sometimes they'd both post up on top of the light pole with nothing but an overcast sky in the background, but more often one of them would post up on the sign. They made numerous forays from the pole, but I only witnessed one catch: the female caught a Jerusalem cricket which, after some difficulty, it finally managed to swallow whole.

I spent a fair amount of time with the bluebirds in the breezy and chilly chute between the Rocky Outcrop and the row of houses along 14th Avenue, while a very light fog-like spray also carried in the wind. Eventually I felt like it was time to leave the bluebirds alone, and accept that the hawks were not coming back anytime soon.

At first, only the less flashy female bluebird was in camera range, but then this male swooped right past my head to land next to a car in a driveway behind me. Whatever insect presumably drew it down must have escaped, and the bird quickly returned to the pole where it traded places with the female on top of the No Parking sign.

The female, meanwhile, had scored a juicy Jerusalem cricket.

From then on, the female pretty much stayed beyond camera range.

The male continued to hunt close to the road.

The Blue Hunter

Here the bluebird is just landing back on a metal stake that it also used as a hunting perch.

Feather Spread

The bluebirds made me happy.

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Mallard

 

Mallard at Lloyd Lake, Golden Gate Park

When I first saw the mallard above, it was doing the head-dip dance with a mallard drake with normal coloration. The normal drake followed this one around like a typical suitor, and I could only wonder whether the pale-colored mallard is female or if this is some kind of adolescent practice of the adult mating ritual. 

I wasn't sure at first that the pale duck was a mallard, so I imported it into my phone's Merlin app when I got home. Bird IDs usually pop right up, but this time the app spun for quite a while before it did finally settle on mallard.

Mallard Chums

I've started seeing more great blue herons around the park again as mating season approaches. This one was resting at South Lake, but there were also a couple in the nesting trees at Blue Heron Lake. Incidentally, I also saw a pale-colored mallard at Blue Heron Lake. Was it the same one from Lloyd Lake, or a second duck?

Ghost Moon
(Shot of moon rising over Twin Peaks on Friday. I assume the double image is from shooting through a double-paned window, but the exposure difference between the two moons is an interesting bit of physics.)

A rain shower passed over us this morning, and then the sun came out and delivered a rainbow.

Sierra High Country Screen Capture, 7:15 a.m. on Saturday

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