Bird Life

 

Western Bluebird on Oak Branch, Sunset Boulevard

We woke up to a rare bluebird day in the offing this morning, so I brought the FZ80 along on today's walk, part of which follows the greenway along Sunset Boulevard. I'd encountered a lot of birds there last week but only had my phone cam, so I was glad there was still a good amount of activity today.

At the optometrist yesterday I had the option of getting my eyes dilated or having a retinal image made. Dilation was covered by insurance, but I chose to fork out $40 for the retinal image, and it was worth it. I could have stared at those pictures a lot longer. Looking at the blood vessels and whatnot suspended in the vitreous humor was like staring at a galaxy far, far away, except that it was a micro-cosmos built by the awe-inspiring biological genius of life itself.

Bark 'n Bluebird

Blue Sky Bluebird

Finch Nibbling Thistle Seeds

Finch and Sow Thistle

The Thistle King

The Scarlet King

Pygmy Nuthatches Working the Crevices

Finch Beak

Solitary Nuthatch

I'm guessing this is also a finch, not a sparrow. I love that it looks so plain at first glance but is actually intricately patterned and has a nice golden hue in its feathers.

The Norwegian-flagged Island Pride, an offshore support vessel, was heading out to sea this morning. That's a helipad on the bow.

There were only a couple of surf scoters between the Cliff House and Seal Rocks this morning, and no wandering tattlers, black turnstones, or oystercatchers. Plenty of pelicans catching updrafts from the surf, though. I brought binoculars to look for the storied brown boobie out on Seal Rocks but did not spot it.

Cruising Altitude

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City Life

 

Anna's Hummingbird, Golden Gate Park

Matilija Poppy with Fog Dew

Pipevine Swallowtail Caterpillar

Narrowleaf Milkweed & Friend

Red Tailed Hawk with Fog Dew

Red Legged Frog Tadpole

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Mission Drift

 

Pelicans Drifting Past Cliff House

Back in 2014 I deleted all my posts going back to 2007 with the intention of turning the blog into a "Year of Mt. Tam" project. But after the year was over, I kept on going, although I started and mainly worked on a Pt. Reyes blog during the next year. After that year was over I deleted the Pt. Reyes blog. Then there was a year where I didn't post anything at all, followed by another re-start with no particular project in mind.

Frankly, I'm surprised I'm still going. I thought my relatively recent drift into using the FZ80 point-and-shoot signaled the start of a downhill slide to oblivion, but then I slid even lower by including phone pix! And yet, I'm still having fun.

Nevertheless, without any particular project to work on (other than the No Project Project), I honestly don't know from one day to the next if that day's post will be my last. 

The sky was clear when I went to bed last night...

...but sometime in the wee hours the fog rolled in, and an especially wet fog at that.

I watched this bird bob its tail and a little question mark popped into my head. Maybe this isn't a surfbird. I googled it and, sure enough, surfbirds don't bob their tails, but wandering tattlers do. Also, the slender beak on this guy is another giveaway.

More and more surf scoters have been showing up below the Cliff House. Watching them dive under the waves in pursuit of their prey, I'm sometimes amazed that they don't get wiped out, especially when they'e in the impact zone right at the edge of the beach. As I was watching today I was surprised to see a Heermann's gull dive-bomb a scoter twice. Both times the scoter ducked under the water to escape. [UPDATE: There have been reports of Parasitic Jaegers in that area, and I wouldn't be surprised if I mistook a jaeger for a gull.]

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Coyote Schedule

 

Smile E. Coyote, Golden Gate Park

I was riding the same route as yesterday, taking the bike detour around the Outside Lands concert deconstruction, when today I encountered the coyote again in exactly the same place. Once again I was able to tag along a little bit. The whole area between MLK Drive and Middle Drive must be pretty good coyote habitat.

Coyote Eating A Gopher

This was an impressively long jump, but whatever he was after got away.

I had to wonder in this moment whether the coyote recognized me from yesterday....

Good-looking animal. I just read this morning that 760 dog bites were reported in the city last year, which I guess shows how many dog-bites it takes to make the news, while even one coyote-bite gets saturation coverage. 

Until this morning I hadn't seen a great blue heron in the park in quite a while. This one was hunting in South Lake.

You don't see cormorants gliding very often.

A beautiful day at Seal Rocks...

...and Ocean Beach.

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Coyote in the Park

 

Coyote, Ears On Alert, Golden Gate Park

Yesterday morning was the coldest day I've experienced so far this summer. It was 56 degrees outside my door, a temperature chilled further by the stiff headwinds I faced all the way to the beach. But at least there was a nice reward when I got there. A large group of brown pelicans was circling above the ocean just offshore and taking turns diving like falling spears in pursuit of fish. I've been waiting all summer to see that.

I've also been waiting a long time to cross paths with a coyote, and I finally got my wish. I was riding down the same bike path where I recently encountered a red-shouldered hawk, just as a coyote wanted to cross the path. I was going too fast to stop right away, and I watched as the coyote crossed the path behind me and continued up a small hill. I turned the bike around and walked it back up the hill, quietly, to see if I could spot him again.

I was pleasantly surprised to see him staked out on the hunt next to the sandy trail. At first he paid me no mind, but when nothing came of the stake-out, he turned back across the trail and ambled into deep cover. I looked for him to no avail, then continued to the beach.

At the beach I had good views of some pigeon guillemots and surf scoters, the usual sea lions and brown pelicans, and had a surprisingly close visit from a black oystercatcher and a few black turnstones.

On the way home, nearly shivering from the cold, I decided to try my luck finding the coyote. Instead of riding up the paved trail, I took the sandy one, pedaling slowly and quietly. I couldn't believe my luck when I did see the coyote again, and I even heard it as well: it seemed to be chewing on a pine cone! 

At least, that's what it sounded like.... 

Coyote-by-the-Trail

I've often seen pigeon guillemots that I believed were nesting in some rocky nooks just below the Cliff House. Sometimes I'd see one or two of them darting out toward Seal Rocks, and other times they'd come darting back like missiles toward the face of the cliff...

...but today I saw several of them and wondered if they were a family group, i.e., fledglings from the Cliff House nest.

Surf Scoters

Sea Lions

Brown Pelicans & Giant Camera

The black oystercatcher was bathing in this tidepool just below the Cliff House. By the time it occurred to me to switch to movie mode, the bird was exiting the pool to dry off its feathers.

Black Oystercatcher Drying Its Feathers

(in slow motion)

After bathing, a bit of preening.

As soon as the oystercatcher was out of the pool, a group of black turnstones showed up to have a little splash.

One of the turnstones was more interested in foraging than bathing.

When I first stopped, and before I could even get my camera out, it looked and sounded like the coyote was eating a pine cone, perhaps as a form of play. So crunchy! But then I realized it wasn't a pine cone making all that noise. It was gopher bones.

Such a satisfying meal.

Surprisingly, the coyote stuck around to look for another bite to eat. Here he's got his leg up, slowly stalking closer to his prey.

And then he does the show-off pounce...

...but misses the mark. He digs around for a minute but finally gives up.

He gives me a look as if I jinxed him, then trots away.

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Mirror, Mirror

 

Sunflower
(Click images to view larger.)

Mirror, mirror, on the wall.

Should I go mirrorless, after all?

The short answer is, "not yet." I like the advantages of a Nikon Z8 over my D800E, such as being able to crank the ISO up to 9000 to get a fast shutter speed for bird and other widlife photography, and to eliminating mirror-slap during focus-stacking and timelapse photography. The one disadvantage that holds me back is the means of focus-stacking in mirrorless cameras.

From what I gather, focus-stacking is automated to an extent, but isn't quite dialed in yet. It looks like a complicated set-up that involves going into the menu to punch in your settings, and there's no way to set the front-to-back range that you want to be sharp. Sometimes you want everything to be sharp, but other times you want a range to be sharp while leaving the background out of focus.

I'm surprised we can't just choose an aperture setting then press a button to set the front and rear focus points (one press for the front, another press for the back), and let the camera, with all its ingenious software, calculate and run the interval to cover the selected focus range. And we should be able to do that in the viewfinder, not just the display screen. I don't want to have to go into the menus.

There are other advantages to going mirrorless, but if I'm going to buy a $4,000 camera, I don't want to have to buy another one when a new model finally comes out that makes focus-stacking, which is one of the great innovations of digital photography, simpler.

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