The San Francisco Citizen

Is this the cover of Field & Stream magazine or a shot from the San Francisco Botanical Gardens (aka Strybing Arboretum)? These Canada Geese have finally taken over parts of Golden Gate Park.

Now some of these critters are probably on their way on up to Canada or Alaska, but we’re getting more and more full-year residents. Just ask Oakland how it feels about these birds and the tons of poo produced every day.

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But in San Francisco, we celebrate these geese.

For now, anyway.

Some people in San Francisco aren’t fully supporting the new/old Victory Garden concept that’s currently changing the appearance of the Civic Center.

 “You start having cows and chickens and goats and other things at Civic Center, ” Brown said, “and I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

But others have already started bringing their farm animals down to City Hall:

Pastoral, bucloic San Francisco, here we come. Victory over “corporate food systems” is just around the corner.

 The San Francisco Bay Guardian’s question from last year: “Where are all the chicks?”  The writer was referring to California Quail in the Presidio of San Francisco. As of 2006, there were female quail there but things took a turn for the worse last year.

Quail sometimes travel between the Presidio and Golden Gate Park - that’s where these two were sighted yesterday. Sometimes, you can see a lot of California’s official state bird at Strybing Arboretum and sometimes you can’t. Thesse critters can fly away from danger, but they generally don’t like being out in the open. The kind of environment that they prefer is not present in S.F. as much as before.

Godspeed, little quail.