Hear the term "city birds," and you probably conjure up pigeons, starlings, robins, sparrows, and the like. But when your city is San Francisco, with large tracts of parkland amidst the urban density, miles of ocean-fronting beach, and the open spaces of the Marin Headlands just across the Golden Gate Bridge -- well then, the definition of "city bird" quickly expands. Think egrets, cormorants, pelicans ... and great blue herons.

One of the most surprising finds for birdwatchers new to the City is the rookery of great blue herons within Golden Gate Park. Sometime around 1993, as well as can be determined, the herons began nesting on a small island in Stow Lake, between Strawberry Hill island and the old boathouse. It's a small island, off limits to humans, with trees that have now been "raccoon-proofed." The herons have returned each year to make (and remake) their nests and hatch their chicks. While I've never taken my tripod and set up for a full day of watching and shooting, I do point a telephoto lens in their direction from time to time. On one recent cloudy day, I witnessed and snapped photos of two young 'uns going at it -- whether fighting or playing, I can't be sure.

A fantastic resource for information about the Stow Lake herons is the San Francisco Nature Education program and its heron watch website page. You might also check out this video produced by Bay Nature on the Air.

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May 4, 2011 -- Quirky

Okay, let's get the obvious mid-American joke out of the way: "Quirky in San Francisco? Isn't that redundant?"

But seriously ... if you walk the city streets often enough, and keep your eyes open and lens ready, you find some interesting small things. Well, some aren't so small. The decorated Christmas house below is as subtle as a sledgehammer. As such, it offers a challenge to the artfully-inclined photographer. It is what it is; you can fill a memory card with snapshots, but its visual verbosity overwhelms the quiet work of composing, seeing, re-seeing.

The pastel bunny tied to the gate door would seem to be another seasonal statement, but in fact it (he? she?) hangs out year-round, and its placement allows for the old frame-within-a-frame treatment (and there are echoing frames in the background.)

Moving down the page ... I only recently discovered "blue Marilyn" with her lovely thermometer brooch. The lines of the railing lead right to this sun-faded cutout, and the house and trim colors are a great complement. Below Marilyn's image, the window front of the long-closed radio/electronics store (and the tiling beneath) provides a delicious array of objects, lines, colors, and street reflections. It was obviously designed for viewing. By contrast, the tableau in the final image -- call it "Tea Time, With Motor Scooter" --  lasted only until the next streetside trash pickup, or the next scavenger drive-by. The teapots themselves, in the busted desk drawer, would not have attracted me. But there was something I liked about their juxtaposition with the scooter; there was, for instance, the sharp, miniscule splash of blue on one teapot vs. the grainy, defocussed blue of the cycle. It appealed to me, anyway. But that might just be my own personal quirk.