Category: Places

Nests

At lunchtime, I went for a walk at Baylands Nature Preserve along the Bay in Palo Alto. One of the first things I saw was a baby American Avocet, still with downy plumage, sweeping the water for small invertebrates. American Avocets are a precocial species, so this little baby was pretty much on its own; there were no adult birds nearby.

A little further on I saw a line of Cliff Swallow nests on a building. The swallows pick up some mud in their bills, then fly up and apply it to the nest, gradually building the structure out so as to completely enclose the nesting birds except for small entry holes. The two nests closest to the camera are darker around the entry holes; that’s where mud has been recently applied, and the damp mud is darker than the dried mud.

I kept walking out the dike along Charleston Slough, past other birds that are I guessed were nesting, though I didn’t actually see a nest or babies: Forster’s Terns, Marsh Wrens, a Northern Harrier, Snowy Egrets, Mallards. About a mile and a quarter from the parking lot, I could finally see the California Gull nesting colony. The gulls were screaming and flying in swirling circles above the colony, and as I got closer I could see why: two researchers had kayaked out to the colony, and were walking around with clipboards checking out the nests. The gulls were divebombing them, and through my binoculars, I could see that the researchers were wearing helmets and jackets for protection.

I watched for a while; I like watching gull nesting colonies, and the addition of the invading researchers made it even more entertaining. Then it was time to head back to work, so I walked back to the parking lot, my mind completely emptied of everything except for birds, sun, mud, and nests.

Summer fog

The summertime morning fog has begun rolling in again. I came vaguely awake early this morning as a morning bus turned the corner at the traffic light below our bedroom. The light was dim and diffuse, and I knew that the fog was hanging a few hundred feet over San Mateo, blocking the sun. There’s cold water welling up from the depths of the Pacific on the other side of the Coastal Range,. It’s making a huge fog bank every morning, and every morning some of that fog drifts inland. In San Francisco, and on the coast side of the hills to the west of us, the fog might be at ground level, but here in downtown San Mateo it hangs above us as low clouds. I love the summertime morning fog. By mid-day, the fog will disperse, exposing us to the relentless California sunshine, and most afternoons the San Mateo Gale will start whipping through town. But summer mornings are dim and cool.

The joys of a San Francisco summer

Summer is upon us in the Bay area, and it is time to reflect again on Mark Twain’s description of Bay area summers:

Along in the summer, when you have suffered about four months of lustrous, pitiless sunshine, you are ready to go down on your knees and plead for rain — hail — snow — thunder and lightning — anything to break the monotony — you will take an earthquake, if you cannot do any better. And the chances are that you’ll get it, too.

Summer

At lunch time, I drove down to the marshes at Baylands Nature Preserve. A baby American Avocet stood at the edge of the water swishing its tiny beak back and forth to gather insects and other invertebrates from the water, just like the adult avocets a few yards away. Out in deeper water, a Mallard hen watched carefully over two baby Mallards swimming on either side of her. I couldn’t help noticing the difference in the way the two species raise their young: the American Avocet is a precocial species whose young are on their own from hatching, while the Mallard is an altricial species whose adults care for their babies for some time. It seemed that everywhere I looked I saw birds nesting or getting ready to nest: Cliff Swallows building their nests of clay on the side of a building, Forster’s Terns apparently nesting on a tiny island in the middle of the marsh, Marsh Wrens warbling madly in the rushes.

I looked across the bay at the green hills of the East Bay. Except some of the lower hills at the far end of the Dumbarton Bridge don’t look all that green any more. It’s been warm for the past few days, and it looks like the rains are finally over and gone, and now some of the low hills are turning summer-brown. The higher hills and mountains are still brilliant green, but it won’t be long before they turn brown, too.

Baby birds and hills turning brown: these two markers in time are as good as any to mark the end of the winter-wet season, and the beginning of the summer-dry season.

Pollen

Here in the Bay Area, we had two or three weeks of rainy, cool weather last month, and all the trees and flowers just sat there in their little plots of ground, waiting. Then it got warm, and all the trees and flowers started to release their pollen again. Except by that time they were behind schedule, and besides they were feeling cranky that they had had to wait so long to release their pollen (because after all the weather is supposed to be perfect here all the time, and even the trees and flowers get cranky when the weather isn’t perfect), and besides that we have had more rain than usual this year and all the plants are feeling frisky, and so the trees and flowers decided to double their pollen output. And my head is stuffed up, and I can’t breathe, and the over-the-counter allergy pills I take don’t work, and I feel even spacier than usual because my whole head is filled with pollen, not brains but pollen.

I can’t wait for summer when everything will dry out and all the plants will turn brown and wither and go dormant.

 

Late winter:
for Roger’s
fiftieth
birthday I
bought two books,
put them on
the kitchen
table. There

they sat, next
to the bills
waiting to
be paid, the
candlesticks,
the tea pot,
and Carol’s
laptop. There

they still sit.
The sun is
higher, the
trees across
the street have
leaves, the bills
have mostly
been paid. The

days flow past
every one
demanding
attention:
eat, sleep, shit,
wash dishes,
water the
garden, and

early spring:
the two books
are still on
the kitchen
table, next to
the tea pot,
and the sun-
light, and us.

for Roger’s birthday, since we didn’t give him the books