From the category archives:

Bay Area

Visiting Hours Over

August 26, 2009 East Bay

A male Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) roots around just before dusk at the Nature Center in Tilden Park.

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The Silky Wonders of Wunderlich

August 16, 2009 Arachnids/Spiders

Picking up from my previous post — about the rare and elusive Linyphia Vaudvillea … here are a few additional spider (Araneae) observations from our walk at Wunderlich Park in Woodside. I’ve perused countless field guides and websites on California spiders but am still unable to identify the aforementioned species. Other spiders and webs are [...]

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The Mud Cracks of Coyote Hills

July 21, 2009 Drought

The Mud Cracks of Coyote Hills could be a family of mutants, living under the floor boards. But they’re not. They should be. This would be a better post.

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Triumph and Loss at the Albany Bulb

July 17, 2009 Art

The Albany Bulb — long my favorite Bay Area example of decay and rebirth — is an artificial peninsula, created from years of dumping construction refuse into this part of the Bay. When the dumping stopped, nature took over.

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Refracted Light, Arcs and Rainbows – Over SF

July 12, 2009 Photography

I’m not a big fan of Descartes. In spite of his genius and complexity, he held callously mechanistic views toward nature and non-human animals. And women, too, depending on his mood. But I’ll give him some love for this explanation of rainbows I recently read at the UCAR website. He simplified the study of a [...]

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Dusk to Dark at the Golden Gate

July 5, 2009 San Francisco

Photos of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, shot at both dusk and at night.

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Marine Mammal Viewing — From a Distance

June 25, 2009 Ethics

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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Splendor in the Low Tide

June 17, 2009 Beaches

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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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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R.I.P. “Hi” – San Francisco’s Young Peregrine Falcon

May 28, 2009 Baby Animals

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 [...]

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Bay Area Goats Fight Fires

May 24, 2009 Disasters

Photo ©ingrid Well, he’s a yawning goat, I must confess. But the photo begs for an alternate characterization. Who needs Smokey Bear when you’ve got a hungry goat? These animals deserve some atta boys (and girls) for their hard labor in fire prevention. In the Oakland and Berkeley Hills you’ll find agile bucks and does [...]

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Checkerspot Anonymity

May 21, 2009 Bay Area

These are checkerspot butterflies for sure. But when I originally posted the possibility of “Bay” checkerspot on the first photo (taken at Sibley), an astute commenter at Flickr corrected my ID: “Unfortunately that is not a Bay checkerspot butterfly.” Simple as that. Got it. Endangered, not likely. If it had been a Bay checkerspot, it [...]

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Buddha at Crown Beach

May 8, 2009 East Bay

The Awakened One, catching the last rays of light at Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary in Alameda. (See this short piece for symbolic insight: Buddha Statues Have Meaning Head to Toe). ©ingrid Taped to the statue: Today is absolutely today Today is not yesterday Today is not tomorrow ~ Ogui ©ingrid

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More Alameda Terns: Caspian, Forster’s, Least Terns

May 5, 2009 East Bay

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 [...]

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There is a Season … Terns (Alameda Terns)

April 18, 2009 Birds

Lame Byrds pun aside . . . Forster’s Tern Nation in Alameda – Sterna forsteri ** Photo usage and restrictions Their gravelly call precedes them, these Forster’s Terns (Sterna forsteri) with their fuzzy black berets and orange feet. They sound like aerial barflys with too much whiskey and smoke on the voice box. When it’s [...]

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Walking the Bay Trail at San Leandro Marina

March 25, 2009 East Bay

** Photo usage and restrictions The East Bay leg of the San Francisco Bay Trail has an extraordinary, long stretch from San Leandro Marina southward to the Hayward Shoreline. Where some of the Bay Trail jogs inland on paved roads, this particular portion runs alongside the Bay and through the heart of the marina itself. [...]

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Homage to Cesar Chavez in Berkeley

February 24, 2009 East Bay

** Photo usage and restrictions If you venture into the off-leash area atop the hills of Cesar Chavez Park in the Berkeley Marina, you’ll come upon a place of remembrance along with a worshipful look north, south, east and west. The solar calendar built on this site pays homage to Cesar Chavez, his legacy commemorated [...]

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