Sunset, Flowers, prettiness.

Caution: walking around looking for birds can also lead to seeing other pretty things.


Wild onion. The taste is similar to a green onion, but the texture is much gummier.

I know this one is out of focus but it made the lights look extra cool that way.

Redbud is still blooming strong, not like those wimpy flowering cherry trees.

Someone's garden plot is going to have a lot of artichokes soon.


I think this is a flower fly, but it might be a bee of some kind?

Some cool things on the lake that are too far away to take pictures of.

As I've already mentioned, my camera doesn't have a very powerful zoom. So any bird that's more than 100 yards from me comes out looking all blurry in photos:


There are at least 20 Western Grebes hanging out on the lake these days, but they just won't come close enough for me to get a good shot.

But they're doing the coolest things!

Their mating displays are basically long games of "Stop repeating me! Stop repeating me!"

... accompanied by some head puffing and running-while-flapping.

There are also still at least two eared grebe pairs hanging out on the lake. Could they be nesting? Last year I wrote down that I saw17 of them on April 4, and none after that. Here's a picture from someone with a cool camera:

Breeding Eared Grebe
Originally uploaded by Fort Photo.

And while I'm posting photos I didn't take, here's one of the Double Crest that gives the double crested cormorant its name.

Double-crested Cormorant, Morro Bay Heron Rookery, April 8, 2007
Originally uploaded by mikebaird.

Loon Update

I saw the loon again on Tuesday. It had changed location to the other "ear" of the lake, over by the library.


It was doing some typical loon things:


And some rather silly looking things:

Though active, it seemed a bit off-kilter to me--swimming while listing to the left or right... this might indicate some kind of neurological problem, which might be caused by eating some bad algae.


And it didn't forget about its bizarre landlubberishness. Here it is waddling into a storm drain where it hid for the rest of the day. No hope of catching it under there...


Haven't seen it again since then.

All the little beesies all the little bearsies never walk in threesies always walk in pairsies...

It's that time again:


Squirrel humping time! (Lydia took this picture--isn't it great?). I recently read in Hannah Holmes' book Suburban Safari that the reason you will often see stumpy tailed squirrels is that during the spring mating frenzy, several males will chase the same female and bite off each others' tails in their eagerness to get to the front of the line.

And squirrels aren't the only ones. Canada geese are getting mighty feisty as they defend potential nest sites (including one pair I saw on top of a chain link fence enclosing the water main. Pretty sure that's not gonna work, guys.) Last year, I saw a goose which was almost certainly a hybrid domestic goose/Canada goose. And this year I think I found its parents:


Other animals have made a bit more progress on the romance front, and are already building nests. Double crested cormorants are back at the lake with a vengeance, and some of them are sporting some very Doubleicious crests! They're shy though, so they only let me take pictures of them carrying their damp sticks when they're safe in their nest tree on Bird Island. Can you find Waldo--the cormorant with a stick?

And SOOOME birdies have already MADE their babies. Hummingbirds nest early, apparently so that their nestlings can fly long before hungry jays come looking for a snack for their own babies.
This isn't a great shot, but the baby is on the left looking straight up. Mom is on the right. And if these hummingbirds are going to continue being super fast while hiding in the dark canopy of a tree, that's probably the best I'm likely to get!


And of course there's mallards. They've been acting super crazy, with males chasing females through air and water while quacking up a storm. Mallards have some very disturbing reproductive biology which you can read about here. Once your jaw is back in place, enjoy these... DUCKLINGS!


(not pictured here are the FIVE drakes which were STILL chasing this lady about.)

What the Easter Bunny brought me:

When I went to Alaska back in 2002, I had torn a ligament and was hobbling around on crutches. This impediment prevented me from doing much hiking and probably was a big part of the reason that the only loons I saw in their summer breeding ground were on postcards in gift shops. Since that trip, I longed to see a loon. The internet told me that others had been lucky enough to photograph them off the Berkeley Marina, so I hoped it was only a matter of time before I was lucky enough to see one. And on Saturday, my day finally arrived!

My sister and her boyfriend spotted something on the muddy shore of the lake on their way to my house. "It's brown and fluffy," they said, "like a baby bird. But really big!" Despite the fact that they had been traveling for the past 3 hours, I demanded they take me immediately to this so-called "baby tern." They walked me over to what Tom and I have dubbed "turtle bridge" (where the stream runs under Broadway) and there on the mud was the cutest giant waterbird of my dreams...

... glancing sexily at us from over the shoulder. A Red-throated loon in its brown fluffy winter plumage! Now, there is only one thing wrong with this picture. Loons are water birds (in Britain they're called Divers) and, as you can see from the picture above, their legs are so far back on their bodies that they can't walk on land. Though it seemed alert and was preening vigorously, its terrestrial lounging cued us that something might be wrong with our fluffy new friend.

A call to the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Fairfield confirmed that Loons Should Not Be on Land. The patient guy I talked to advised that we try to catch the loon and bring it in, if we could. He recommended throwing a towel over it and then grabbing it, taking care to hold it away from the face as it tried to kick and peck with all its ungrateful might. It could spend the night in a dark warm place and be brought over to the center when it opened in the morning. We readied some supplies:

The loon shyly watched me climb down the cement wall onto the squishy, mussel encrusted mud it had chosen as a hangout spot:

I threw the towel like a champion bird-catcher...

Aaaand the loon scooted penguin-style, on its belly, into the water and away from me. I was left holding the muddy towel, which now resembled a loon Shroud of Turin.


Looks like it wasn't so sickly after all! My sister got these last 2 pictures with her mighty 10X zoom.

Knowing that loons migrate in spring, on a journey that can stretch from Baja to Alaska, my best guess is that it was exhausted from a long flight and stopped for a breather and maybe a warm-up. I looked for the loon over the next few days but didn't see it again. May it have a safe journey up to Alaska and make a million babies!

Point Pinole Adventures!

Did some sketching on Monday out at Point Pinole. I had never been there before, although now that I think of it I bet that I've passed through on Amtrak a few times. There are some nice views of the bay and some lovely wildflowers, like blue-eyed grass:

And lupine:
And lupine pollinators:
Long ago I remember going on a flower walk where the guide explained that each individual lupine blossom turns from white to red (or was it red to white?) once it has been pollinated, so that bees know where to go.

There were also some old ruins of bunkers scattered around. This one makes me think of the Barrow-Downs...


I also got a few grainy pictures of shorebirds through my binoculars... it's harder than it looks! Here is some kind of sandpiper:

And a very blurry Clark's grebe.

Black Crowned Thug Herons

Young night herons, like the one above, look so different from adults that they almost seem like a different animal. (And considering I've heard people in the park confuse night herons for owls, hawks, and ducks, it's easy to see how a brown one vs a grey one would cause even more difficulty for them.) The Birder's Handbook says that they usually take 2-3 years to reach breeding age, but doesn't mention how long it takes for them to get adult plumage. Though all night herons are as surly as human teenagers, I have been checking the young ones periodically for signs of more grown-up fashion (They stop sagging their pants and their feathers become dry-clean only). Yesterday I spotted a few likely candidates. This one is still fairly streaky, but the characteristic black crown is becoming darker. This one also had bright yellow-green legs (compared to the one above, whose legs were pale yellow-white.)


Looking even a bit more mature is this guy being skeptically eyed by an adult. "Hmmmm, your crown may be black, but the rest of your body is a dingy gray-brown. Come back when you've cleaned up, sonnyboy!"
Interestingly, not all of the young herons are progressing at the same rate. Is this because they hatched at slightly different times? Or another reason?

While I was taking in the magestic beauty of these scruffy juveniles, a woman came over to the fence and started feeding the birds, tossing cheerios, bread, and sundry cheesy pizza crusts into the enclosure.

"What's that you say? Cheesy pizza crusts?"


The addition of food caused a mad scuffle, with geese hissing over the cheerios and herons ready to break a beer bottle over the head of anyone who tried to compete for a cheesy bit. I have never seen them so active. Although my camera was running out of battery and suffering from a delayed shutter response, I got a few pictures of how herons handle conflict.

Step 1:Extend your neck and assess how burly your opponent is:

Step 2: Your opponent is now checking you out as well. Quick, look like you're so gigantic that nobody will question your inaliable right to the Cheerios. Raise up your backles (hackles for birds?) and stick your three white tentacle feathers into the air.

"Thish here'sh MY Cheeriosh, SHEE?"



Step 3: RUMMMMMBLLLLLLE!

Chicks and ducks and geese BETTER scurry! This pizza is MINE. SRSLY.

I didn't get a good shot of the best of the action, where one heron flies up and tries to peck the other from above. I almost got hit in the face by a heron wing though.

After the frenzy was over, I noticed one pathetic survivor of the skirmish. The lady had thrown in some moldy tortillas, bag and all. I asked her about this when I saw her do it and she seemed unconcerned. "They'll get it out."

15 minutes later the bag had been pecked at listlessly by a coot, pooped on by a goose, and stepped on by a heron. The coot's pecking seemed to indicate that it could *see* that there was food in the bag, but it didn't explore further to find the open hole where it could have gotten the food out. If there had been any seagulls there (like those at the Palace of Fine Arts lagoon) I'm sure they would have ripped that thing open immediately, as I've seen them do with other plastic bags, wrappers, and even tupperware. This is interesting to me--are different bird species smarter or dumber than others? Why could habituated seagulls learn to peck open plastic bags, and pelicans learn to get excited when seeing a plastic bag... but other birds didn't seem to associate a plastic bag with food? This can't be the first time bread in a plastic bag has been in the enclosure. Why didn't these birds succeed in getting the tortillas when they were going nuts over all the other food? Or are moldy whole wheat tortillas just as unappetizing to birds as they are to humans?

PS: Another park visitor eventually jumped the fence, dumped out the tortillas, and threw away the bag. Geese ate the tortillas within minutes.