The swan

During my second excursion into the city with my rag-tag band of adventurers, we found ourselves somewhere known as "The Exploratorium". Leah, Margret, Long-Jimmy and I. It was this huge megalithic structure built in the style of ancient Greece with massive pillars standing dozens of feet tall. Perhaps five stories? I don't know. They were huge though, and quite imposing.
     To some people this may not sound so thrilling, but to me it was great. Chilling out in the shade of these huge stone slabs, was an immense white swan. I think it was a Mute Swan, because it made no sounds but it could have just been a 'pretty quiet trumpeter swan', regardless, that was the hugest bird I've seen in a long time. Not counting ostriches (I may have seen them at the zoo) or Emus (same as ostriches) that was probably the largest bird I'll lay eyes on for a while.
     Aside from swangantua, there were also some turtles living in the same water. I've lived 25 years, and never before had I ever seen a wild turtle. It was very awesome to me, I was totally okay with seeing living turtles, and I was even more okay with seeing a tiny baby turtle chilling on a rock only a few moments later. Within a 10 minute span, I saw turtles and a freakin' huge swan. It was excellent.
     I didn't mention it in the entry about the parrots, but I also for the first time saw what I believe was a Clark's Grebe. I saw another one or two of them that day. It all made me very giddy and happy. Another bird to add to my list was a mysterious white crane, which was too far away to identify. I saw three different instances of a white crane, all within 5 miles of each other, so it is entirely possible that I saw the same bird three times. I could have seen one twice, and one once, or even simply three separate birds. I don't know if they have a population of white cranes in San Fran, but I do know they have at least one, though to be more geographically correct I saw the white crane in Burlingame.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

     With the Psych/Soc club at SPSCC, I went to San Francisco, Ca, from Apr 25-29. During that time I went on some amazing walks through a beautiful city and got completely smashed as well as very entirely hung-over. Aside from all of that there were a couple of instances which I will share. One of which is an experience which has a documentary about it.
     There is a population of wild parrots living on Telegraph Hill, somewhere in that huge city, near Coit tower. I had no idea that I'd actually be seing living real life wild parrots, but there they were. Too far away for us to view easily, it took a good deal of staring at trees before we spotted them. A small flock of them flew over-head, and to my giddy joy, they weren't squawking parrots, they were chattering and laughing parrots. Perhaps other people may not describe their sound as laughter, but this guy does. Me.
     Thinking back on that day, it was pretty amazing to see those birds flying around together. I remember wishing that I could just fly up and join with their party. They must have been having a good time up there, riding those breezes. I was and still am totally jealous. In fact, the 'me' that is writing this is jealous of the 'me' that is back in the past seeing those birds with wild-parrot-virgin-eyes. He is a lucky 'me', that bastard.

Eagle vs Hawk

    I was at work not so long ago driving around in one of the many cool machines which we have in our fleet in the shop. I was on the thirteenth hole on the golf course, near the sand bunker. I stopped to pee in the bushes and was getting back into the driver's position when my bird-sense went off and I looked up. Perhaps 45 feet up in the air, at most 60 feet away from me, there was a rather large Bald Eagle flying by.
      I grabbed out my binoculars, and leapt out of the cart. I zeroed in on it. It was flying away from me, but it was still close enough to still be huge in the lenses. Out of the right side of my vision a red-tailed hawk swooped in on the offensive. I was in disbelief, I never imagined I'd see such a sight in person but here it was. The two of them were in a dog fight and I had the only eyes on the action.
     It ended rather abruptly as they went behind some trees. My vehicle was not nearly fast enough for me to have jumped in and followed them but I wasn't upset. Bird watching seems to be made up of random instances great activity with huge lengths of bland birding. I must say though, that at my job there are so many birds around that I always have something to watch, and I am also very easily amused so even seeing an American robin running around with a worm in its beak gives me a smile and a chuckle.