Townsend's warblers singing

In the Presidio, Townsend's warblers began singing their full breeding song last Thursday. My coworker Diony and I noticed that they had not been singing Wednesday, nor any day before -- no, it was Thursday that they began singing. And, it isn't as if the Townsend's warblers are all concentrated in one location in the Presidio. They are nearly ubiquitous: in the coniferous and mixed tree plantations, in stands of willow with the yellow-rumped warblers and ruby-crowned kinglets, and even in isolated cypress trees surrounded by low-growing vegetation.  That day, I observed them singing in three very distinct and separate places, one well out of earshot from the next. I posted this observation to our local Yahoo group SFBirds, which local birders use to communicate with one another, and others had observed the same or similar.

With all the mysteries of nature that exist, I thought it was pretty cool to capture this event. Did a new wave of migrants arrive the previous night? Did the hormones of all the local wintering birds suddenly spike? One of my SF birding mentors Matt Zlatunich once used the phrase "they are all responding to the same cues".  Matt and I had been observing a mixed-species flock of migratory songbirds with very different plumages, life histories, and final destinations northward. I like this phrase because, to me, it means yes, we humans can observe birds' presence and some of their behavior; but a combination of many, many things that we may not know have brought them in front of us for viewing: the position of the stars in the sky; the precise length of day; barometric pressure; wind patterns; pollen in the air; stream flows; the sound of the surf below as they fly in darkness, thousands of feet above the ground.

I probably could have noticed the onset in Townsend's warbler song in previous years, had I been more in tune to it. The strange thing for me is that I'm not doing anything different(ly?) this year than any prior year. Maybe it was just that I happened to use my bike to get around that day, so heard more birds; and that a fifth year in the field here has just added to my own knowledge base enough that I reached a new point. I'm grateful that Diony was there to confirm what I think I was hearing. There are many things in nature that one learns to wonder about. The more you learn, the more you realize how much more there is to learn. As many photos as I do take, on various cameras and now on my smartphone, so much of the experience of being outdoors is a flash-in-the-pan observation that can't be recorded or shared, just experienced.

Townsend's warblers will soon migrate northward to Oregon and Alaska to find mates and raise the next generation. Then, next fall, again they will return to two specific regions -- a thin strip of Pacific coast from Oregon south to Baja California, and another, distinct region ranging from southeast Arizona through central Mexico and into Central America.

I don't have a powerful enough lens for a great photo of a Townsend's warbler to share. (See the link above.) Perhaps it's time I got one. But, here's a picture I took of a small group of birders at Battery East in the Presidio, on participants in my monthly bird walk there. We were sort of hamming it up, staring into the thick fog. It had been one of those mornings that began miserable and became glorious as the sun "burned off" the fog.

Presidio Park Stewards birding the bluffs, October 2011.

Happy Presidents' Day!

Happy Presidents' Day ! (er, Washington's Birthday. Why was Lincoln's name/birthday removed, anyway?)
 
Enjoy a photo of an Obama shotglass!

Lala's Obama Shotglass, Charlottesville, 2013.

Beardog and Mt. Tam, Summer 2013.

I just don't have enough pictures of Bear on the blog, so he's making a cameo. He looks fairly presidential, right? So does Mount Tam in the back. I learned this week that Tamalpais is a word from the local Native Americans, the Ohlone, who gave it the name. Tamal means "west" or "coastal" and pais means "mountain," or "peak". It, along with Mt. Diablo, are the two eyes of the turtle; the rest of the turtle lies east of the mountain. Current political boundaries make the turtle's other features somewhat unclear to define.

At any rate, the picture of Bear with Mt. Tam is appropriate, since Bear happily spent most of this holiday with his loving mama. For him there could be no better way to spend any day.

Source: Wikipedia.

American Eateries: Waffle House

Waffle House on Yale Blvd.,  Albuquerque, 2013.

Here's a little bit of Americana. If my diner geography is accurate, Waffle House is found in the South, and Denny's is its Northern answer. And Village Inn seems to be in the West. They are not affiliated, as far as I know, but at any of these you can probably order American food like chicken-fried steak and drink bottomless cups of weak coffee.

I missed taking the photo of its famous sign with Scrabble-like letters spelling its name. Highway drivers in the Southern U.S. know to look for those glowing yellow letters. 

Here's the menu for your perusal. You've got Alice's Iced Tea, Bert's Best Bowl of Chili, and Walt's Soup to choose from. Save room for Bert's Chili Sausage Gravy (Bert was creative) and Papa Joe's Pork Chops! Some of the typos are amusing... like in the Ligher Choices section. See if you can find it. 

Let's go to Waffle House! 

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Photographer's note: this was shot with 100 speed film that was inadvertently set to ASA 800, then "pushed" in the developing process to allow enough light to hit the negative. Hence the tonal quality. I kind of like it.

Abandoned Used Car Lot, Albuquerque

I'm interested to see places where nature has begun to return to human-altered landscapes. I've blogged about it before, and probably will again -- it was a recurring theme in a family trip to Europe two summers ago, but I have yet to publish any of those photos here...for now. Anyhow, here is a glimpse into wild taking over a sliver of Albuquerque. Catey and I stumbled upon this old used car lot when we were giving ourselves a self-guided tour of the city over Thanksgiving. 

Nature returning, Albuquerque, November 2013.

We thought it was pretty cool. We were taken by the look of the asphalt fractured by strands of fine grass. We don't know what species it is, but we assume it's a non-native. I'm not sure why this matters, but given the nature of our work, it permeates most of our thoughts about plants and the human landscape. Somehow, I do like the idea that these grasses are native. I like the idea that they once grew in this very spot.

Broken skateboard in old used car lot, Albuquerque, November 2013.

Whatever grass it is, one has to wonder how it colonized. How do weeds do this? How do they get everywhere? Here, in Albuquerque, it's not hard to imagine that wind brought this seed here. Wind brought seed here to arrive the very day that a flaw first appeared in this parking lot. It may have blown from a sidewalk three feet away. It may have blown from the foothills of Sandia Mountain, 10 miles away.

Medical Arts Ave NE & Lomas Blvd NE, 1991-2012. Google Earth Imagery.