A title inspired by a recent viewing of Jimmy Stewart and The Flight of the Phoenix . . . a photographic tribute inspired by one of my favorite birds: the Brown Pelican. California Brown Pelican Recovery The Brown Pelican is not quite a Phoenix, raising itself from metaphorical ashes. But it has mythological parallels in…
Learning From a Racing Pigeon
I think the pigeon people are trying to tell me something. Late last year, I took a rambunctious fledgling pigeon to a nearby hospital. In April, I drove two [very] baby pigeons to the same hospital. I’m always snapping pigeon photos even when other photographers sweep their lenses right over the pigeon landscape. So, it…
Visiting Hours Over
A male Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) roots around just before dusk at the Nature Center in Tilden Park.
The Goldfinch and Thistle (A Pub With No Pints)
The Bay Area has a thistle problem, or so we hear, but goldfinches weren’t complaining on our hike yesterday. Here’s a photo of that Artichoke Thistle (Cynara cardunculus), taken last week in Tilden Park: And a few photos taken in Briones, where ongoing eradication has taken out bunches of the Artichoke Thistle in the grasslands:…
Things to Know (and Love) About a Japanese Quail
He was misidentified but not forgotten — this lone Japanese Quail who fluttered his way into a wildlife hospital and then, into our hands and hearts. We gave him an appropriately Japanese name: “Mikiko” which, loosely translated, means “child of the tree.” A fellow volunteer pointed out that he is not, in fact, a child…
The Case of the Misidentified Quail
He handed over the box: “A rescued quail.” We volunteer at a wildlife hospital, so a safe assumption might be California Quail. But assumptions are silly in a world where us newer volunteers sometimes mess up species identification. This bird clearly wasn’t a California Quail. Their markings are distinct and easy once you know them. “It’s…
R.I.P. “Hi” – San Francisco’s Young Peregrine Falcon
This video compresses days 20 to 32 in the lives of three Peregrine Falcon eyasses (chicks) nesting in the PG&E building in downtown San Francisco. See photos and visual logs of the young San Francisco Peregrines in local photographer Glenn Nevill’s Raptor Galleries. And learn more about the Peregrine Falcon research at the website of…
Canada Goslings Getting No Respect
If you’re a Canada Goose gosling in a public park, don’t count on too much respect. On this day, I stopped by one of my favorite bay-side walking spots and saw before me a flock of goslings. It was an enormous flock of babies interspersed with adults — like a National Geographic image of a giant penguin colony . . .
Wildlife & Nature Photography Ethics
“Responsible wildlife photographers observe a strict code of ethics. The cardinal rule: if anything you do directly or indirectly endangers, restricts or harasses an animal, stop and leave the animal alone. The integrity of a wildlife photograph evaporates if the subject was not free to come and go, if it shows fear or anxiousness, if…
More Alameda Terns: Caspian, Forster’s, Least Terns
Take a look at this image of terns — not because it’s anything spectacular. In fact, those terns were but specks on my visual horizon, so this is a dramatic crop to show just one thing: the size differential between the Caspian Terns and the Forster’s Terns I wrote about in a previous post. The…