Every Cedar Waxwing is the penultimate waxwing. Even though I think each image I snap in March or April will be the last of the season, invariably, another flock of waxwings descends for a photo op.
Mudbath
I’m keen to see eyes peering out of mudflats . . . the creatures from the bog, the foraging carp, the bullfrog in camo, a Pacific chorus frog in a dewdrop. I shot this photo at Blake Garden, just north of Berkeley in the Kensington Hills. My vision is tuned to anomalies and, sure enough,…
Parrot City
I haven’t visited my parrot people in recent weeks. The last time I saw them was on a mission for Parrot Patrol, checking up on them, making sure people were behaving around San Francisco’s finest.
The Great Newt Commute
The Great Newt Commute is what happens on the way to the Great Newt Party. From the first winter rains through early spring, California Newts migrate from their summer homes to their winter breeding grounds — to ponds and streams where they mate and lay eggs before trundling back up the hills and into burrows…
Stormy Beach People
I’m a perfect fit with Northern California, loving the storm-whipped ocean as I do. From the shoreline, that is. Keeping my eye on that 7th wave. Wrapped in layers. Wishing I could still operate my camera while wearing gloves. Keeping the UV filter on for the saline mist. Loving every second of this El-Niño-driven swell….
These Aren’t Sleeper Waves . . . But They Could Be
It’s the deceptive nature of sleeper waves, sneaker waves, rogue waves — all names for the same phenomenon — that people unfamiliar with the California coast are lulled into a false sense of security. They are rogue or sleeper precisely because they strike randomly, out of the great blue . . .
Ahimsa at the Tidepools
I swear, if I have to ask one more kid to stop throwing rocks at animals . . . It was an imperfect plan to begin with: super-low tide on a Sunday at the gorgeous but hardly-secret Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. I’ve been waiting for a daylight minus (-) tide for a few months. I’d even…
The Unheralded Hulet Hornbeck
Until this week, I didn’t know how much gratitude I owed Mr. Hulet Hornbeck. The sign below marks the head of a commemorative trail at Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline — a park in the vast and lovely East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD). When Hornbeck began his tenure as Chief of Land Acquisition for EBRPD…
The Ghostliness of Black Diamond Mines
Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve isn’t haunted, but it’s a park grown upon the ghosts of California’s history. The spirits of the Ohlone and Miwok people still permeate the land. When I stand on wild hilltops, I look to the expanse of tract development over what, by all accounts, was once a natural paradise in…
Where Old Docks Go to Die
Old docks smell, this much I can tell you. You’ll catch a whiff of decomposing mussels and sea greens long before you ever see the old boards stacked, as these particular boards were, in the parking lot of the Berkeley Marina. The Marina is renovating — replacing the old A-B-C docks with improved versions. And…
