Category: San Francisco
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Long ago, starter birdwatchers in an Arizona desert spotted a huge black bird. Perched commandingly, unimpressed by puny humans. Could it be – a raven? In the desert? Weren't they forest wilderness birds? A handy bird guide said the raven was “Common only in the Far North and in the West, especially near heavy timber.”…
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Pier 39 on the San Francisco waterfront is an open mall, with music, performers, a merry-go-round, people who will do a caricature of you-with-an-enormous-head, and stores for the left-handed or sock-mad. There's an aquarium and a marina. You can catch a ferry. The pier was originally for commercial shipping. Then it was redeveloped as a…
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San Francisco's wild parrots, subjects of a very nice book and movie, are famously “of Telegraph Hill.” But sometimes a few appear over my obscure Ingleside neighborhood where they land in the trees, shrieking. I have seen a flock of eight, and family groups of four. They are cherry-headed conures (Aratinga erythrogenys), native to Ecuador…
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La Dolce Vita di Lampo Lampo slept in the station at Campiglia Marittima, a busy railway junction. In the morning he'd jump on the train to Piombino and walk Mirna Barlettani to school. Then he'd take the train back to Campiglia. When the Turin or Rome Express stopped in Campiglia, Lampo would gaze meaningfully…
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Yesterday we went to see salmon spawning and of course it ended in a fight in a bar. We went to Lagunitas, California, to the lovely Leo Cogan Fish Viewing Area, and eventually saw a large female coho on her redd, redd being the word for the nest area she excavates in the gravel, where…
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Update on the SF Zoo's tool-flourishing aye-ayes: I recently got a short tour of the normally-closed nocturnal house. This now houses an elderly mouse lemur and a thriving aye-aye family. Sabrina and Warlock produced a son, Dobby, who looks just as eccentric as his elders. He is only the 2nd second-generation aye-aye born in the…
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Afternoon at the zoo. Fake savannah, real giraffes. Fake rocks, real plants. In a real crevice on top of a fake cliff, real weeds growing in real dust. Child: “That giraffe is sleeping on the rock!” It did look as if the giraffe had approached the simulated sandstone cliff and laid her head along the…
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In turbulent times, I may turn to the garden for solace and calm, as on a recent afternoon. Fondly I gazed on the gigantic rose bush. (An old Cecile Brunner, with small fragrant flowers: it needs no fertilizer, no insecticides, no watering; it simply goes about growing, blooming, and taking over the block. Occasionally enraged…
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Five representatives were ranting and frothing in Congress the other day about how the economic recovery bill included a $30 million earmark for San Francisco mice. Representative Jackie Speier, who represents San Francisco and San Mateo counties, was surprised. She looked into it and wrote something on her findings for the San Francisco Chronicle, a…
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The Brooks Park community garden sits on a knobby, windy hilltop with near views of San Francisco and Daly City, and a far view of the Pacific. With a plastic watering can left for the use of gardeners, I was dreamily watering lettuce seedlings in our nano-ranch when a high-energy individual sped up and gave…
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