June 2009

Where the Birds Walk

June 28, 2009 Birds

Etched in the pavement of a San Francisco sidewalk . . . Bird Graffiti – ©ingridtaylar On Alameda’s Crown Beach . . .

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Encounters With [the Elusive] California Beach Hopper

June 25, 2009 Bay Area

California Beach Hopper or Megalorchestia californiana As fleas go, they’re giants. Not giants in the sense of Bikini-Atoll-nuclear-mutant-gone-bad giants. But by flea standards, they’re positively huge — about 1 inch long. That’s probably because they’re not parasitic dog or cat fleas, but rather, amphipods — shrimp-like creatures who dine on organic matter at the outer [...]

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Marine Mammal Viewing — From a Distance

June 25, 2009 Bay Area

Hugh and I had another knucklehead-versus-wildlife encounter this past week with a family on the Mendocino coast. We hiked over an unpopulated bluff and saw a mom and kids chasing a young sea lion across the rocks for a photo op. Their actions were forcing the young animal away from her resting spot, as she [...]

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Bay & Beach Flotsam – Episode #1

June 21, 2009 Bay Flotsam


San Francisco Bay trash and pollution: I’ve seen: four-foot, mangy teddy bears nested in cord grass at high tide; an endangered Clapper Rail preening in a pile plastic bottles and corn chip bags; helium balloons tangled in seaweed, 100 yards out in the bog of low tide; plovers foraging around cigarette butts; fishing line and plastic loops just waiting to entangle the next curious gull.

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Wasp Art

June 18, 2009 Bug Nation

Wasp Nest – ©ingridtaylar I didn’t see it this way through the viewfinder — the aquarelle tone and texture of this wasp nest, clutching the painted boards. (Just as I didn’t see the pixie face of a blue damselfly I’d been shooting over a pond — until I offloaded those giant orbs-for-eyes onto my Mac.) [...]

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Splendor in the Low Tide

June 17, 2009 California

An homage to Warren and Natalie — in title alone. There’s photographic magic in the sun rising over a super-low tide. At the point where dawn meets a -2.0, the strange, the stunning, the predictable and the chaotic all converge on that plane of tide pools, mudflats, and beach flea burrows. One of my favorite [...]

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Not-So-Ordinary Black Birds

June 15, 2009 Animal Behavior

Until the esteemed Brewer’s Blackbird Sir Swoops made a name for himself by dive-bombing pedestrians, there’s a good chance he was just one of many birds in black, hopping along the sidewalks of San Francisco without much notice. On first glance, blackbirds and black-colored birds may seem visually ordinary. But closer inspection always renders a [...]

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Picnic Table Graffiti #1

June 11, 2009 Birds

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Admiring – But Not Feeding – San Francisco’s Wild Parrots

June 9, 2009 Bay Area

All photos taken at a respectful distance with a 300mm Zuiko lens: effective reach, 600mm. I was meandering toward Market in San Francisco when I saw them in my peripheral vision. It was cluster of rambunctious humans, a large family with children. It shouldn’t have seemed out of the ordinary on a San Francisco summer [...]

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Swoops the Blackbird – Exhibit A in “Mobbing” Behavior

June 8, 2009 Animal Behavior

I snapped this on the weekend before national t.v. crews showed up to fuel the celebrity of Swoops the Blackbird. (Click on the image for the larger Flickr version.) ©ingridtaylar Swoops, a Brewer’s Blackbird with a nest of young to protect, perches on the awnings overlooking his brood and buzzes pedestrians who venture too close [...]

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How Starlings Colonized the United States (and Other Stories)

June 6, 2009 Agriculture

William Shakespeare gets a bad rap for all of the Starlings. The story (or rumor) goes that some Victorian-era Shakespeare fans — misguided to be sure — hatched a plan to colonize, on U.S. soil, every bird species featured in Shakespeare’s plays. According to this Scientific American article a group known as the American Acclimatization [...]

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San Francisco’s Peregrine Falcons & Fledglings

June 5, 2009 Baby Animals

Originally posted in June of 2009, this piece deals with the new fledglings on top of San Francisco’s PG&E Building, but also with general issues of wildlife survival and human interaction.

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Young Fox Squirrels at Play

June 2, 2009 Mammals

Photos of young/juvenile fox squirrels playing in an urban environment, on telephone poles and wires. Also includes images of baby squirrels in the hands of a wildlife rehabilitator.

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