On The Wing

 

Blue-Eyed Darner On The Wing, Metson Lake

Strybing Arboretum is completely closed today in the wake of the coyote incident. When I learned that it happend around 11:15 a.m. (on Friday) it struck me that, with dozens of small children probably packing lunches in an active coyote area, it's unfortunately no surprise that things went sideways. 

Campers at Strybing Arboretum just after noon on Friday.

I was just winging it this morning, heading out on the bike to enjoy the strikingly beautiful day. When I got to the beach I decided to photograph the recently rebuilt dune system at Ocean Beach so I can see the changes that next winter will bring. The dunes that aren't covered with plants tend to move with the winds.

Lizard Tail at Land's End

One day closer to the eventual reopening of the old Cliff House....

The California towhee has excellent camouflage. I like the way those rufous butt feathers match the coloration around the bird's head. These shots almost look like different individuals, but they are the same. It's fluffing its feathers in the second two shots.

I was at North Lake in Golden Gate Park and hearing several jays scolding something in the strip of woods between the lake and the (recently reopened) golf course. A robin in the same area was vibrating its wings, also as a kind of distress or warning gesture, but making no noise. Within seconds of my stopping in the hope of catching sight of the predator, the commotion died down and stopped altogether. Whatever had gotten the birds worked up probably left the area when I stopped.

A couple of black-crowned night herons were back at Metson Lake this morning. I believe one was a female, as its plumage was plain brown, much better for camouflage. The camo was so good, in fact, that I realized there could have been herons hiding in the branches of the downed tree that I wouldn't be able to see on a casual ride-by.

It's a little frustrating to use the tracking feature on the FZ80 to capture dragonflies in flight, but every now and then it would lock onto the insect instead of the background.

Sign of the Times

A couple of young ravens were being chummy on a tree stump at Blue Heron Lake, but they broke it up before I could get my camera out.

* * *

A Walk In The Park

 

This was an especially brightly colored mosaic darner, even among others of its own kind. Guessing this is a blue-eyed darner.

I'd spent the morning commiserating with my wife about last night's saddest presidential debate ever, and needed to shake it off with a walk down to Strybing Arboretum. I'd hoped to photograph some interesting birds, but as soon as I got in there I realized it was insect season more than bird season. 

There was an almost wild lushness and haphazard disarray among the late-June garden paths, although the paths themselves were neat and in many cases fairly newly paved. I don't mean disarray in any pejorative sense. I liked it that way, and spent a couple of hours just poking around in, and near, the California Garden. 

[UPDATE] I just learned that a child was bitten by a coyote in the garden yesterday (Friday, 6/28). The bite required stitches and must have happened after I left since the incident created quite a commotion that resulted in evacuation of the park. There was an unusually large number of young children in the garden for some kind of special camper gathering. 

When I'd entered that morning I asked the ticket lady where the coyote was since there were warning signs up. She said someone had seen a big one earlier in the day in the general area of where I was heading. I didn't see it despite looking for it and listening for birds possibly scolding a skulking predator. 

The western half of the garden (including the Children's Garden) is closed today (Saturday, 6/29). I had been half-heartedly heading for that part of the garden to look for birds on Friday when I saw the gardeners stringing closure tape across a main trail. I'd assumed they were about to do gardening work until I learned of the coyote attack, which happened around 11:15 a.m. Makes me wonder if all those little campers had their lunches with them, the smell of which might have attracted the coyote.

[UPDATE] Well, the news has reported that three coyotes in the garden where the girl was bitten have been killed. Apparently there was a den in the area, and the incident was about den protection rather than food odors. 

Here's a somewhat dustier darner compared with the one at the top of the post.

Sunshine Gilding The Lily

This cardinal meadowhawk let me approach to within inches. Only when I had to move the branch with my hand to walk past it did the dragonfly take off.

Habitat shot of the dragonfly and lily pond.

Leaf Map

Satyr Anglewing

Cabbage White

California Buckeye with Bushtit

Pipevine Swallowtail

A shaky shot of a bushtit with a small caterpillar. 

Matilija Poppies

Mission Blue
(I love that the striped "pants" on its legs match its antennae.)

I could hear a hummingbird sounding off as they often do from the tops of branches. I looked and looked for it, only to realize it was only about five feet above me, nowhere near the top of the buckeye.

For an ex-navy guy, I can't help wondering why a red admiral isn't a type of skipper....

Red Admiral in Profile, Nectaring on California Buckeye

Bumbling Through The Tulips

* * *

Hawks, Etc.

 

Hawk's Leap Into Flight

I suspect the hawk above is the same youngster from my last post. It was hunting in the same general area today, and I had to stop to photograph it when I saw it perched atop an almost completely delimbed snag. It was so brazenly out in the open that I was surprised it wasn't being hounded by crows or jays, or even robins or hummingbirds.

It was kind of a hawky day, with a pair of red-tails gliding on the strong onshore winds down by Ocean Beach, and several red-shouldered hawks screeching to each other here and there. 

At Metson Lake the other day, I saw (but didn't stop to photograph) a black-crowned night heron. It's been a while since I've seen one there, and when I checked today it was gone, replaced by a great blue heron busily preening its feathers.

I started the day with a walk out over Parnassus Heights and down through Cole Valley that segued into a loop through the Haight and a meander through Golden Gate Park before heading home through the Inner Sunset, where I was glad to see the hardware store being rebuilt after having been destroyed by fire back in August 2023.

Along the way I carried on the usual philosophical discourse with myself, this time about how we form our worldviews, and to what extent our worldviews are formed for us by mass media and social media, friends and family, thought leaders and influencers. It's so easy to just stay in our bubbles and declare anything outside the bubble to be nonsense, or simply not worth the calories it takes to cogitate on it.

For me, one of the many beauties of being in nature is having respite from all the clamoring voices trying to shape my worldview. In nature I can simply be in the world and perceive it directly (or at least as directly as my rose-colored glasses will allow). And if I pass any judgment, it's aesthetic rather than moral, bestowing a lowering of the blood pressure rather than a raising of it....

Young Red-Tailed Hawk in Flight Near Beach Chalet

Out beyond the rip currents, the meeting of two ships: the five-year-old Singapore-flagged YM Warranty container ship, recently in Long Beach and heading to Oakland, prepares to pass in front of the eight-year-old Liberian-flagged bulk carrier Ken Moonys, recently in Stockton and heading to Los Angeles.

Sinuous Beauty at Metson Lake

Perch With Unobstructed View

Attack!

The young hunter missed on this try, then circled around to perch on another nearby snag.

I stopped to check out the Rose Garden in Golden Gate Park, but was more interested in the adjacent Heroes Redwood Grove, a fittingly peaceful tribute, first planted in 1919, to fallen veterans of the First World War.

Second time I couldn't resist the dahlia in the Garden for the Environment.

King of the Eucalyptus, Sharon Meadow

* * *

Young Hunter

 

Young Red-Tailed Hawk, Golden Gate Park

The clouds this morning were so wild-looking. I wished I'd gotten out of bed early enough to catch the sunrise. Remnants of monsoonal weather, I guess. There's even a 20 percent chance of rain and thunderstorms in the forecast for San Francisco. I brought the FZ80 on my bike ride in case the clouds still looked interesting from the beach, but there was too much fog mixed in. I might have felt two rain drops during the whole ride.

On the way home I saw this juvenile red-tail fly into a tree, apparently gripping something small in its talons. I couldn't tell if the hawk actually had anything until it began to consume it. The images aren't detailed enough for me to tell for sure what its prey was. It rested on one leg for less than a minute as it cast its hawkeye about for its next meal, then leaped off its branch and flew out of sight.

I can't tell if the prey is a mouse or a bird.

* * *

Rhymes with Honolulu

 

Waikiki Beach Web Cam Snip

I've been reading Dust, The Modern World In A Trillion Particles, by Jay Owens, and am in the chapter about the draining of what once was the fourth largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea. Previous chapters have been about the American Dust Bowl and even the draining of Owens Lake here in California. All the stories are about civilization's withdrawals greatly exceeding its deposits in the Bank of Nature.

Reading the news this morning were more stories about increasing animus against immigration, and even about the simmering specter of nuclear war, both of which felt, at least in part, like climate change issues. As countries face increasingly limited resources such as fresh water and arable soil, it's not clear how we're going to avoid having to squeeze through terrifying bottlenecks of our own creation.

When the resources we depend on for our economies and our food production run out, when all of us feel the pressure to immigrate, will our last hope be to blast off in rockets to Mars? It's impossible for me to imagine a world where living on Mars would be preferable to living on Earth.

At that point I was ready for some diversion, so I opened up a tab on Windy.com and looked at webcam images from around the world (the parts in daylight, that is). Two of my favorite images turned out to remind me of a Bob Dylan song called You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go. One picture shows a place that brings back fond memories, and the other shows the most wild-looking sky of any other webcam I saw this morning.

Ashtabula, Ohio Web Cam Snip

I'll look for you in old Honolulu,

San Francisco, Ashtabula,

You're gonna have to leave me now, I know

But I'll seee you in the sky above

In the tall grass, in the ones I love,

You're gonna make me lonesome when you go.

--Bob Dylan

* * *

Dandelion Variations

 

Dandelion Puff

I forgot to check the web cams before I left this morning. After booting up the computer while eating a quick breakfast bagel I got sidetracked by a New York Times mini-profile of Sean Penn. One thing that struck me was how he waved off the gods of trauma while sitting comfortably with the gods of dissipation (quoting Bukowski, "Find what you love and let it kill you."). By the time I finished reading, my appreciation for Penn had gone up, but it was time to go. I rushed off having forgotten to make sure it was as foggy on Mt. Tam today as it was yesterday.

I'd hoped to score some brocken specter up there, but it was not to be. The fog was already dissipating as I reached the Robin Williams Tunnel. I thought I might find something else to inspire my photography-bones up there, but it wasn't happening. I felt like I'd rather being out on a bike ride. After playing around with a dandelion puff for a little while, I hiked back to the car, stopping briefly to watch a few chittering California quail move along the forest edge, and a baby Steller's jay that fluttered in ecstasy and desperation as an adult came to feed it, then headed home.

Waiting for the Wind

This is the first shot, by itself...

...in the focus stack that made this shot. As often happens, I liked both versions. (I also like an older shot that focuses on the seeds at the center of the puff.)

* * *

Coot-Foot Tree

 

Red-Tailed Hawks, Golden Gate Park

I've been noticing some unusual leaves on the sidewalk during my morning walks lately, and today I decided to try to find out what they are. The leaves are striking because they look a bit like coot feet! (I'm pretty sure I have a picture of coot feet somewhere in my files, but I can't find it, hence the link to Audubon.)

I had little hope of making an ID since there are no flowers on the trees at this time, but I was pleasantly surprised to get a 94% match on the leaves alone, using PlantNet. My "coot-foot tree" is actually called Catalina ironwood (Lyonothamnus floribundus), a California native endemic to the Channel Islands and liberally planted along the streets of San Francisco.

On a bike ride after my walk I checked the Murphy Windmill for red-tailed hawks, but drew a blank. A little farther along, though, I noticed two red-tails on the same tree where I recently photographed a red-tail devouring its prey.

Coot-Foot Tree

Coot-Foot Leaf

Coot-Foot Flowers
(7/12/2024)

Dahlia in the Fog, Garden for the Environment

Emerging Sunflower, Golden Gate Park

The two hawks were busy preening and didn't seem bothered at all by my presence.

One of the hawks managed to pull out one of its own feathers.

The feather floated down to me, coming so close that I only had to take two steps to catch it. 

Here's a somewhat shaky hand-held video clip of the two red-tails. I forgot that the camera was still set on slo-mo, so the shakiness isn't as annoying as it might have been. The hawk on the right was opening its beak in a way that looked like it was calling out, but in fact it wasn't making a sound.

* * *