Random Day

 

Golden Gate Park Bison

I could smell the petrichor as soon as I started coasting down the hill toward Golden Gate Park. It wasn't raining. It was just the fog, light enough that the streets were dry, yet heavy enough to go pitter-patter on my nylon windbreaker. After our recently beautiful sunny days, I was taken aback by the sudden dense fog and chilly temps. It was as cold on my morning walk here in mid-June as I experienced during the winter. The bison are still shedding their winter coats, a dead giveaway that they were never native to San Francisco....

This lone foxglove managed to sprout from a crevice in the cement gutter next to the Hidden Garden steps off Kirkham Street at 16th Avenue.

These look like small-leaved stinging nettles in Golden Gate Heights Park, but I was too chicken to zap myself on a stem to find out. A recent newspaper story about a woman who called for rescue in a remote area of the Sierra Nevada was thought to have waded into a bunch of stinging nettle while getting water from a creek. She reported that she couldn't walk or even feel her legs. 

I figure no one was playing tennis (or playing with their dog, as some do despite the signs) when this pine toppled onto the courts at GGH Park. It must have made quite a racket when it fell.

This is at Noriega Street, looking south, with the Great Highway receding into the distance on the left. They excavated sand from in front of the sea wall and piled it into a dune closer to the ocean. This was just two days' work, and I'll be interested to see how they leave it in the end. 

Someone forgot to program the Juneteenth Great Highway street closure into the Waymo computer. Although the vehicle stopped in a crosswalk, it didn't ram the gate, and it soon backed up and continued on its merry way. In a woman's voice, the car instructed people to get out of the way as it backed up, but the voice was nearly drowned out by nearby traffic noise. I'm surprised the Waymo cars don't use a beeping sound when they're backing up.

* * *

Smoke on the Water

 

A layer of wildfire smoke drifts over the Golden Gate at sunset, with Mt. Tamalpais in the distance.

Heading out on my walk Tuesday morning I could see a huge, intact layer of wildfire smoke hanging over the Pacific Ocean and running parallel to the coast. Although I had my phone camera with me, it didn't look very photo-worthy from my vantage point. But I pictured the sun setting behind it and planned to head up to Grandview Park in the evening. 

What I didn't account for was the changing wind. Long before our planet spun us out of sight of its nearest star, the smoke had all blown inland, except for a band that was now perpendicular to the coast and moving like fog through the Golden Gate.

Even though the offshore smoke was gone, I still took a walk over to the park at sunset, bringing the FZ80. I had a fair amount of company despite the chilly wind. The sun descended well north of where it did when I last went up there for sunset, but with solstice arriving tomorrow, it'll soon be headed back south.

We woke up this morning to very subdued light and thought the smoke must have become awful overnight, but it was fog, not smoke, that lurked behind the curtain. The Purple Air map shows pretty good air quality throughout the Bay Area this morning, and even surprisingly up around the Point Fire, which Cal Fire reported at 50 percent containment as of late last night.

City Layers

Sunset Over Seal Rocks

Mt. Tam Dressed In Smoky Haze

This last puddle of light lasted a surprisingly long time (I would guess a couple of minutes).

Sunset view from Grandview Park.

Cloud Feather

* * *

The Hemlock Eater

 

Bison Resting in a Bed of Sand

The bison were out in their field again on Monday, and a little closer to the road than usual, so I couldn't resist making a stop. While I was watching the bison I noticed several tree swallows swooping over them, then saw a nest box right in front of me with a baby swallow in it. 

While I was watching the swallows, my attention was drawn back to the bison when one of them started thrashing around with a stalk of poison hemlock. I couldn't tell exactly what the bison was doing since its dark face was in shadow, but the stalk of hemlock appeared to get stuck in the bison's horns. I've seen elk thrash the brush out at Pt. Reyes and walk off with a garland of leafy branches, but that's not what unfolded here. I never actually saw the hemlock go into the bison's mouth, but it disappeared from its horns and did not appear to be trampled on the ground.

That same frisky fellow briefly chased a couple of nearby bison, apparently no worse off for eating the hemlock (though signs of poisoning can take an hour). I've read that browsing animals like deer will nibble on poison hemlock and become mildly incapacitated as it depresses the animal's nervous system. No problem for them; they just make a day bed until the effects wear off.

As I continued my ride I encountered what appeared to be a pair of adult red-tailed hawks and one juvenile red-tail, all making some kind of commotion in the same general area. I assumed the adults were still feeding the noisy young one, even though the young one was about as big as the adults.

A little later I stopped to watch a Great Blue Heron at Metson Lake. I saw some nearby gopher holes and went over to one of the freshest looking dirt mounds, and sure enough, a gopher was working it. The GBH saw the gopher and began to approach, but it might have been apprehensive because I was so close. I slowly put more distance between us without scaring the gopher, but the GBH lost interest and walked away, even with the gopher actively excavating the sandy soil, an apparently easy meal.

Tree swallows at feeding time in a Bison Paddock nest box.

This bison thrashed a poison hemlock plant that appeared to get stuck in its horns... and then very suddenly the hemlock was gone, apparently eaten.

There were no red-tails on the Murphy Windmill blades, but this one had taken up a perch in a more central location, on the ornamental ball at the outer tip of the mill's windshaft.

An adult red-tail on feeding duty.

Great Blue Heron, Metson Lake

An excavating gopher at Metson Lake.

This is as close as the GBH got to the gopher, even after I backed away and the gopher continued its work.

* * *

Grandview Park

 

Sunday Morning View Toward Mt. Tamalpais

I probably think about how lucky I am to live here in the Bay Area at least once a day. And even though that includes the gray days when the winds are squeezing tendrils of chilling fog into my bones, I admit to especially favoring these rare days of sparkling clarity. It wasn't clear enough to see Chimney Rock at Pt. Reyes, or even the Farallons, on Sunday, but I felt like I could almost see deer browsing on Mt. Tam's grassy, brown hilltops. Today, wildfire smoke from up near Healdsburg could turn yesterday's clarity into a memory. But even so, I know those deer are still there, waiting to be revealed, always.

As I took in the view I also watched a pair of white-crowned sparrows feeding on the red sheep sorrel while bumblebees gathered pollen and nectar on nearby buckwheat.

Bumblebees were also all over the purple bush lupines.

The bush lupines are nice, but the little orange monkey flower made my day. The Parks Department has done a really nice job of saving a little bit of native wildness in Grandview Park.

A little south of Grandview, one of my favorite roadside gardens is currently in excellent form.

Lavender and friends.

* * *

Mono Lake Levels

 

Mono Lake, March 1988
Lake Level 6,379.2'

My most recent visit to Mono Lake provoked me to wonder whether I'd ever experienced such a high lake level (~6,383.8 feet) on any of my previous sixteen visits over the years. I looked back through my photo files and found that I actually had. In July and October 2006, the level was 6,384.5 feet, about 8.4 inches higher than now (give or take, since lake levels are reported by month, not by day, and the June '24 levels have yet to be tallied).

The lowest lake level I ever experienced was in June 1992, when the lake was at 6,374.4 feet (9.4 feet lower than now), so low that it opened up a land bridge to Negit Island, giving access by coyotes and other non-winged predators to nesting gulls.

Another thing I noticed about my photos during high lake levels (Oct. 2006, Aug. 2007, Oct. 2011, and Oct. 2023) is that they don't include shots of the South Tufa area. The only exception is a shot from July 2006, which shows how little beach existed between the tufa towers and the surrounding desert plant life.

Finally, I was surprised to find that until this past week, I last photographed the South Tufa area in 2013! I've been going instead to Navy Beach or Black Point, or I've skipped visiting the lake altogether despite being in the general area, due in part to a mildly humbug attitude about sharing a place where I once found solitude that has now become a stop for tour buses. 

Even without a tour bus showing up on this trip, I found myself being followed around by a boisterous gaggle of shutterbugs, and a little later I even had to wait on one rude photographer who walked into my shot so he could get his own shot!  It was kind of hilarious, but then again, there will always be people with single-minded purpose who will take what they want from Mono Lake.

Which is why it's so awesome that David Gaines was able to stop Goliath (the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, or DWP) from sucking the lake as dry as Owens Lake to the south, a project it began in 1941. Although the lake level is mandated to rise to the so-called Public Trust level of 6,392 feet (about eight feet higher than it is now, and a level not seen since the 1960s), DWP's continued water diversions from the streams that feed Mono Lake seem likely ensure that level is never reached. The more water that flows into the lake, the more DWP wants to divert.

Land Bridge to Negit Island, June 1992
Lake Level, 6,374.4'

South Tufa and Wild Barley, June 1992
Lake Level, 6,374.4'

Tufa and Glowing Clouds, September 1997
Lake Level, 6,382.2'

Brine Flies at South Tufa, July 2006
Lake Level, 6,384.5'

Tufa Spires, October 2008
Lake Level, 6,382.3'

Photographers, October 2008
Lake Level, 6,382.3'

Sunrise at South Tufa, May 2009
Lake Level, 6382.3'

Island in the Lake, October 2009
Lake Level, 6,381.7'

Tufa Silhouettes, August 2010
Lake Level, 6382.3'

Photographers, June 2011
Lake Level, 6,382.6'

Tufa and Photographers, October 2011
Lake Level, 6,383.7'

Beach Tufa, May 2013
Lake Level, 6,382.0'

Tufa and Encroaching Plant Life, June 2024
Lake Level, 6,383.8'

There's a great shot by George Ward on the cover of John Hart's 1996 book, Storm Over Mono, that shows a low meadow of foxtail barley around the South Tufa area. I photographed foxtail barley at Mono Lake on my June 1992 visit but have never seen it there since. Speaking of changes, if the lake ever does regain its Public Trust level, I wonder if any of the tufa towers will still rise above the lake's surface. Check out these photos from the old days before 1940. (My favorite is Mono Craters, 1930, where a river runs through it.)

* * *

Bison in the Hemlock

 

Bison Paddock, Golden Gate Park

I recently wondered if the bison were being kept out of the main meadow because it's full of poison hemlock, but that theory went out the window when I rode by on Thursday. 

The fog was so thick near the paddock that I could hear a susurrous of droplets striking my nylon windbreaker as I coasted downhill, and a little later, as my glasses became layered with mist, I smelled the petrichor that accompanies the first rain on a dry day. (My wife and I were treated to the same smell, a rarity in San Francisco, in Lee Vining earlier this week.)

As I began the return trip I saw no red-tailed hawks on the Murphy Windmill blades, but almost as soon as I passed the windmill, a red-tail swooped across the road right in front of me and snatched a baby bird from some tree branches, then winged it back (chased by a pair of hummingbirds) to a nearby perch to enjoy its feast.

Farther up the hill, I stopped to photograph a great blue heron resting at Metson Lake. I hadn't been seeing any GBHs there for a while until late last week. I suspect I'm seeing the same one, as it's resting in the same spot. (I haven't seen a night heron there since April.)

The bison are shedding their coats despite their coldest winter being summer in San Francisco. I was glad to have put on a longjohn top beneath my windbreaker on Thursday's ride.

Red-tail with baby bird.

Does the red-tail look fierce, or just happy?

Resting Great Blue Heron at Metson Lake

A few mallards were also resting on the lake's fallen tree.

The lake's cattails are looking good.

Some of the older stalks have already been harvested.

A slider's-eye view from the nearly fluorescent lake water.

A double-crested cormorant that had been feeding on minnows intruded on a couple of ducks when it hopped onto a branch to dry off.

Yawning GBH

The cormorant moved to a branch of its own to gently flap and air-dry its outstretched wings.

* * *