Surprise New Species!

What's this? A Barn Owl at the Lake Merritt visitor center?


Hmm, that taxdermy job might fool pigeons, but it didn't fool me. And come to think of it, that pigeon nest is right around the corner of the building from this guy, so I'm guessing the pigeons weren't fooled either.

More Signs of Spring, or, a hodgepogerry of photography

It's staying light in the evening now, long enough to walk around and get some good shots after dinner. Who's hanging out at the lake these days? (Besides me!?)

Forster's terns are still around and eating fish bigger than their heads! Look at the razor sharp tail on that ninja seabird.

Hummingbird that color coordinates itself with its perch:

Check out the lovely blue green face of this great egret.

And check out egret's supercool park bench hangout. I like its posture here--it had just flown up and landed.

It also comes with a very extendable head, and a bad urban attitude. It was actually taller than me when it did this:


Random turtle. They show up in the lake periodically. They may be washing downstream during the rains, or people may be releasing unwanted pets into the lake. Either way, brackish water is not good for turtles. At least this one made it to the beach:


For Heidi: here are the goslings I promised. This is the third group I've seen, and I think this pair is actually the two I made fun of earlier for defending the spot on top of the chain link maintenance cage. I don't know how you geese did it, but I think you did it. There are three babies; can you spot them all?


And buckeye is blooming now, an adaptation that lets a broad-leaved deciduous tree survive California's summer--it makes a very early effort to get pollinated before it runs out of water and sheds all its leaves around July:

Flounder and Scuttle: a true life tale

Uh - well - first, uhh, this shark chased us - yeah - yeah! And we tried to - but we couldn't - and - grrrrrrrrr - and - and we - whoooaaaaaa - oh, and then we were safe. But then this seagull came, and it was this is this, and that is that, and...

AND THEN IT ATE ME!

As it turns out, Flounder was too big for Scuttle to swallow.

But, as we know, seagulls are flying (of course they were flying)... and they're out to discover... easy meals they can steal from their neighbors.

Filthy little hobbitses. They stole it from us.

Brewer's Blackbirds singing in the dead of night. Or more acurately, chirping all the darn time.

There is a small colony of Brewer's blackbirds that nests at the Lake each year, along Lakeview avenue. Every spring, commuters on their way to BART have to pass by The Blackbird Tree and face the Wrath of the Blackbird.

Why do blackbirds attack people? "Mobbing" is an infamous behavior of many birds, including blackbirds, where they attack a predator, either individually or in groups. Thus, you might think that this behavior serves to drive the predator away, keeping the blackbird's babies safes for anothers days. However, in Blackbirds of the Americas, Gordon Orians makes a different argument. He notes that pecking people in the back of the head (or otherwise getting macho on a predator) is NOT correllated with extra success in the baby department. So why are they wasting their time? One possibility is that they are merely showing off their machismo for the benefit of any watching ladies. Another possiblity is that birds become agressive when they have a bad bit of territory (one with humans always tramping through it), and that those extra predators in the bad territory account for the lower nest success.


Why do the Brewer's blackbirds nest colonially? One answer I read about in Blackbirds of the Americas is that they like to have a lot of neighbors so that they can spy on each other and learn where the food is. If one bird sees its neighbor returning from the Kaiser building with a big fat beakful of bugs, it knows that's a good potential source to feed its own babies. Off it goes in the same direction.

Sightings: The mystery of the Forster's Tern

New friends are showing up at the lake as spring turns to summer... I think this is a Forster's tern. Two years ago there were a ton of these guys hanging out at the lake all summer. I even saw a fledgling tern. Last year, I didn't see any! I wonder if they have decided to give the lake another try this year.

This is another bird that you might not notice right away (especially if you are expecting only seagulls). But you can often hear their distinctive calls, which they seem to make as they chase each other around (read "constantly.") If you get a closer look, you can see that they have forked tails, black heads, and wings so pointy they could be used as ninja stars.


Harder to capture on film is their hunting technique--they fly staring down into the water, and if they spot something, flip a 180 and plunge straight down into the water with a splash.

A rude cloacaning

For weeks now, there have been signs that the pigeons of the lake are Up to Something Suspicious. There's been Neck Puffing... Obnoxious Cooing...

...Tail dragging... Circle Spinning...

But I never could catch the rascals in the act... until yesterday! BAM. Money Shot:

I saw these two covertly "Billing" each other, and my Pidgey-Sense started tingling. I barely had time to turn on my camera before the pigeons leaped directly from First Base to a Home Run. This tender scene lasted all of two cloaca-grinding seconds before they were back to pecking innocently at invisible seeds, nary a blush to be seen on their feathery cheeks.

Since the dude pigeons seem to court any lady in the area, I'm not sure when exactly love leads to marriage/baby carriage, but at some point, Birder's Handbook indicates that they do become monogamous and both pigeons incubate and care for their young.

Pigeons often nest on ledges, especially under roofs or bridges. They don't seem to mind tight spaces, and can even pile sticks right on top of those spiny things put up to dissuade them.

I don't think the eggs in this nest have hatched yet, but I'm keeping an eye on it; my book says it will take 16-19 days. The pigeon family is one of the few that produces "crop milk" to provide protein to their hatchlings. That might be one reason why they develop so quickly and can breed a mere 6 months after hatching--they drink their Milk! It does a pigeon body good.

I LIKE BABIES

I found some more BABIES!



It looks like some Canada geese have managed to hatch some chicks this year. I saw one pair with a single chick...


And one pair with two chicks (only one of them is in this shot). Note the distinctive foot-hole one of the parents has.
I recently looked up the City of Oakland's report on Canada Goose management and learned that they are no longer trying to suppress breeding of geese (if they ever were), because the permanent resident geese don't create as strong a health hazard (=mounds of nasty poo everywhere) as the hundreds of migrant geese which spend summer at the lake.

Also, since they can't fly, the baby geese can only get on land in certain areas of the lake (like the beaches, and a few areas where the retaining wall is graded) and so that's where the babies are most likely to be found. These guys were hanging out in the boathouse parking lot.

Also found: one adorable DUCKLING PILE! These guys were sleeping in the shadow of a cement planter. I think it's the same little family of 8 I photographed earlier, with its single blonde member. They look a bit sleeker this week, less fluffy.