The Great Blue Herons of Golden Gate Park like to wake up and get their stretching in as soon as they can.
What a funky chicken. Click to expand:
Don’t miss your chance to see these critters this season via San Francisco Nature Education, the non-profit founded by attorney Nancy DeStefanis. They have some programs, like Heron Watch and Birding for Everyone. Check their calendar or this one on SFGate.com.
The Great Blue Herons of Golden Gate Park sometimes like to get up high and ball up. I guess they do that to warm up in the sun after a cold night.
Don’t miss your chance to see these critters this season via San Francisco Nature Education, the non-profit founded by attorney Nancy DeStefanis. They’ll have some programs, like Heron Watch and Birding for Everyone going on tomorrow, May 2, 2009, and on into the future. Check their calendar or thisone on SFGate.com.
Can you see the beak? Click to expand
The Great Blue Herons of Golden Gate Park need to mash up their crayfish treats before eating, so sometimes you’ll get to hear a wet splat and then see the guts fly.
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KERSPLATT!
A close up view from an earlier day:
Look out, little crayfish…
Just as the Cliff Swallows come back to Capistrano every March (or so they say), the Great Blue Herons of San Francisco return to nest on a small island on Stow Lake every January.
See what it looks like via filmmaker Rick Bacigalupi of BaciPix, who presents Nancy DeStefanis, The Heron Lady. Check out SFNature.org for the latest, including new tours of Heron’s Head Park (aka Pier 98) in southeast San Francisco.
This fellow is a regular at the nests in the tops of of the Monterey Cypress of Stow Lake. He’s ready to fight and love all over again this year.
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Welcome back, Ardea herodias
Here’s a rare (for San Francisco) Green Heron (Butorides virescens) doing it’s thing in Golden Gate Park.
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This one didn’t end well for the crayfish.
Stow Lake, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California
This didn’t end well for the gopher.
The parent bird, the tallest one, just hunted and killed a pocket gopher to bring back to the nest high above Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. The middle chick (fledgling now?) scooped up the undigested rodent to the chagrin of its siblings.
You can see the outline of the gopher slowly sliding down the neck of the aptly named Great Blue Heron.
Canon 600mm 4.0 IS with Canon 2x II extender.
