Waiting for Rain

 

Sunrise with Sutro Tower and Twin Peaks

I wonder how much time I spend waiting for something to happen. Yesterday I was waiting for rain, waiting for my bike to be fixed, waiting for the election to be over. There's also waiting to catch a bird in my lens, waiting for a coyote to show itself, waiting to see if the sunrise will fire up, waiting for my wife to come home from work. John Lennon joked that life is what happens while you're making other plans. Waiting is how we appreciate life when the plans are out of our hands.

Painted Sunrise

Golden Gate Heights

Trash Pick-up Day

12th Avenue Rooftops

Arden Wood Christian Science Community Residence

Hive Mind Storage Units

House of Parrots

There are four guys going up in that bucket on the right, presumably to work on attaching the big square thing going up on the left.

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Nature in the City

 

Coyote, Golden Gate Park

Having decided against driving up to Taylor Creek to see a lackluster salmon run a little while ago, I figured my next trip would be up the Sacramento Valley to Mt. Shasta and the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge. I was looking forward to photographing Mt. Shasta with a fresh coat of snow on it, then visiting the cacophonous ruckus of countless geese at the refuge.

Well, the snow has arrived, but unfortunately, as a story in The Guardian told it a couple of weeks ago, nearly 100,000 birds have recently died of botulism in "the worst such outbreak at the lake ever recorded." It makes my heart sick to know that things have gotten so bad up there. The natural world of even just earlier this century has been taking a beating, with scorching summers, wildfires and smoke, disappointing tidepools, and massive die-offs of fish and birds.

I'd been looking forward to exploring nature around the state during retirement, but I can't quite rationalize burning a lot of gasoline to visit places where we've already put nature under seige with an overheating planet. Instead, it looks like I'll continue to concentrate my nature-watching right here in San Francisco, where I can get my fix on foot and bicycle.

An American lady butterfly soaks up the morning rays along the Sunset Parkway.

A Gathering of Pigeons, Underpass at Lincoln & Sunset

Kinglet in the Fall Foliage, Golden Gate Park

Bushtit (Seemingly) at Rest

As I began walking around Elk Glen Lake, I was surprised to see this red-shouldered hawk resting nonchalantly on a pine bough only a few feet higher than my head. It looks like the pupil in the sunlit eye is smaller than the one in the shaded eye, but I think it's just an illusion caused by the lack of contrast in the shaded eye.

I suspect it's the same hawk I encountered in the same area last week.

I finally caught a squirrel in the act of munching on the stems of this tree. I still couldn't tell whether it also eats the berries (only some of which were ripe). After rasping away at the stem for a bit, the squirrel unceremoniously drops the rest of the branch onto the ground, which is littered with the things.

Badass Song Sparrow

Townsend's Warbler Framed by Leaves, North Lake

A great blue heron was back at Metson Lake, standing on a submerged branch from the tree that fell in a couple years ago. The park still has not removed most of the main trunk (and maybe never will).

Every day I am on the lookout for a coyote in the adjacent meadows as I turn from JFK Drive up toward Blue Heron Lake, despite the fact that in the last two-plus years I have seen a coyote near the lake precisely once.

So when I saw this young lady about to cross Blue Heron Lake Drive right in front of me (just past the Pioneer Log Cabin), I had to contain my excitement for fear of scaring her off as I dismounted my bike and got my camera out. I ended up following her for quite a while. Here, she's stopped to see if a rustle in the grass was going to turn into lunch (it didn't).

Here she is drinking from a puddle next to a dirt trail...

...now making water a little farther along. She actually walked past this spot, then turned around to give it a second sniff. I figure she's either refreshing her own scent or trying to cover up a scent left by a dog or other animal.

She crossed JFK and ducked into the woods on the other side, and when I spotted her again she was peacefully lying down in some dry grass. I was able to show her to several people who walked by, wondering what I was looking at. Everyone was excited and also respectful, and the coyote remained alert but not terribly concerned. I took the hint, though, and stopped following her around.

Web Cam View of Mt. Shasta with Season's First Snow

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Ducky Day

 

Morning at the Beach

The light was beautiful at the beach Monday morning. The low angle this time of year makes any scene more dramatic, but the large surf and passing clouds were a nice touch. It was one of those mornings where it was hot when the sun was shining and cold when a cloud passed in front and blocked its warmth. 

A rain squall hung over the ocean northwest of Mt. Tamalpais but must have fizzled out before coming ashore. Recent pictures of my brother with his grandson in Seattle show them wearing raincoats already, and I'm ready to have some of that rain come our way any time now.

View north from the seawall promenade along the Upper Great Highway.

I suspect the chairs were put near that big log, rather than the other way around....

Female Ring-necked Duck at North Lake

Dyer's Polypore Near North Lake

Turning Leaves

Ruddy Ducks, Blue Heron Lake

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Flicker Garden

 

Red-shafted Flicker (aka Northern Flicker), San Francisco Botanical Garden

My wife had gone with a friend to the Death Cafe, and I was in the botanical garden thinking it was pretty dead in there. I'd neither seen nor heard many birds, and I'd only photographed a dead monarch butterfly caught in a spider snare, and a nearby spider that had just snagged its next meal. But back in the Children's Garden I was moving slowly, watching a group of sparrows and trying not to send them all diving for cover -- not because I wanted to photograph them, but just to see if I could pull it off -- when I noticed the flicker.

The flicker obviously spotted me, but for once it didn't immediately dart for cover. I watched as it used its big beefy beak to probe for insects, stirring up a colony of tiny ants on a tree stump in the process, and I snapped a few photos through all kinds of intervening grass and branches before it finally bounded into the open. 

When it moved back into a less open area I turned my attention to a California towhee that appeared to be dust-bathing. The thing is, it wasn't bathing so much as just easing itself into a soft divot on the ground to use as a comfy bed for resting and preening. 

Eventually a frozen pizza and a beer were calling me home to lunch, so I started making my way back to my bike. I was almost out of the garden when a ruby-crowned kinglet showed up, and then a Townsend's warbler. I'd stumbled on another small birdy area right next to the parking lot behind the Hall of Flowers. Beer and pizza could wait.

The monarch probably tore up the spider web as it struggled in vain to free itself. A fly was perched on the butterfly's body.

As I took a step or two past the monarch, this orb-weaver suddenly scuttled across its web to snag a tiny beetle.

Flicker at Rest

Probing for Insects

California Towhee on a Branch

Towhee Preening its Feathers

Towhee at Rest

I'd been wondering where they put the pitcher plants, and I found at least some of them in the Children's Garden. The carnivorous plant box that used to be kept by the old greenhouse near the California Garden also had sundews, but I couldn't find any in this box. Maybe just the wrong season.

I'd seen some impressive chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms on a stump in the Children's Garden, but this little gilled mushroom among the redwoods surprised me more.

Speedy Little Fellow

Townsend's Warbler

I wasn't sure it was a ruby-crowned kinglet until I saw this through my lens.

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