Snow Birds

The standard wisdom, drummed into my head as a child in Indiana, was that birds all go south for the winter. As every child knows, birds are a sign of spring. How do children know this "fact"? It's in picture books and songs, and adults repeat it until children repeat it.

But like so many "facts" about the world around us, it's wrong; and only the slightest attention is necessary to determine that it's wrong. A walk outdoors in a snowy setting on a gloomy late December day reveals at least ten species of birds easily visible to even a casual observer without binoculars. They're making their usual bird noises and flitting around in their usual bird manner, or (in the case of the Cooper's Hawk) perching attentively on branches to watch for an opportunity to pick off one of the others. The variety and number are certainly lower in winter than during migration season, but the birds are far from absent.

Change of Seasons

Lake Merritt is full of coots now. They are there in the winter but not in the summer. Soon the winter ducks will be there. Anyone who walks by the lake can observe the seasons in close detail.

Marine Mammals Up Close

Today in San Francisco Bay I swam with a seal. My friend and I swim regularly in protected areas (because we don't have a paddler to escort us into the open bay), and until today the only wildlife we had seen were birds. We knew we were swimming where fish occurred, too, because many of the birds we usually see are fish-eating birds such as comorants and pelicans. And we knew that common seals (or harbor seals, Phoca vitulina), come into the bay, but we had never seen one even from a distance.

We had swum out about half a mile from our starting point, across a sort of big cove. We had stopped to reconnect, and were discussing whether or not to swim around the point forming the opposite side of the cove from where we had started, when my friend said "oh! a seal!" I turned around and there it was, about eight feet away, with its head above water looking me straight in the eyes.

Everyone I've known who has met seals swimming says that they are harmless. I know a few people who have met them and had the seals swim along with them, and now I am one of those people as well. We didn't swim towards the animal, because we didn't want to piss it off (and swimming toward it probably would have violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act's prohibition against harassing oceanic wildlife). We were also a little worried, just because we'd never met one close and we weren't sure how we might make it mad or what it would do if we did. A full-size harbor seal weighs about 300 pounds and is about six feet long, and is much more comfortable in the water than I am.

So we swam away, and when I looked over at my friend the seal was right behind her. For a while it swam kind of behind and next to her with its head out, as if she had taken her earless dog for a swim. She says it never touched her, and when we got back near the beach it didn't come out on shore with us.

While I waited for her to arrive, before we started swimming, I watched a group of crows harass a Cooper's hawk in the trees by the beach. The crows were sort of half-hearted about their mission; they'd let the hawk sit among them for a while and then one would jump up and take some lazy aerial swipes at the hawk until the hawk flew to a new perch nearby. They make a sort of bubbly version of their ordinary "caw! caw!" noise when they are flying aggressively at an intruder.

Pelicans

I swim in San Francisco Bay about once a week. Throughout the summer, we see a lot of brown pelicans while we are swimming. They are very, very big up close, and they cast a huge shadow (rather alarming the first time you see it) when they fly over you close to the water.

Like a lot of water birds, they are much less wary of people in the water than they are of people on shore. You can pretty much swim right up to them before they change course to avoid you. We don't swim up to them on purpose, of course; more often, we are swimming along and they are floating along, sort of paddling and sort of just chilling, and we all (bird and human) realize all of a sudden that we are very near. Or they'll be flying over, intending to stop on the water, and have to make a last minute course change to avoid alighting on a swimmer's head.

I haven't seen any pelicans while swimming yet this year. But last week I did see a pelican fly past the window of my office, many stories above Market Street in San Francisco. It was traveling north, and it seemed from the brown head to be a juvenile. It wasn't a bird I had expected at all to see so high off the ground, and in the middle of the city.

Road Kill

One way that we urban dwellers often encounter wild animals is dead. I see road kill from time to time year-round, but recently I have seen more road kill than usual and all the ones I could recognize have been possums. I think that possums probably stick closely to gutters and back yards except during the dating season. Right now they are out and about, traveling across thoroughfares that their raccoon, skunk, and squirrel friends are better at navigating or avoiding.

Marine Mammals

I take the bus to work, across the bridge. From the bus, you get a great view over the bay, because the bus seats put you higher up than car seats do. This morning I saw a seal or a sea lion swimming around under the bridge.

I also swim in the bay from time to time, but I've never met a marine mammal while I was swimming. I saw a seal once in La Jolla Bay, in San Diego, about 100 yards away. My friend and I had to remind each other not to swim over and check it out.

Me: "I really want to go see it closer."
Friend: "Don't. It's bad for you and for it and it's illegal."
Me: "Well, I know."
Friend: "I really want to swim over there too."
Me: "Don't. It's bad for you and for it and it's illegal."
Friend: "I know."
Me: "I really want to go see it closer."

I also see cormorants from the bridge, but I've never seen a nesting falcon.

Birds at the Ballpark

Once at an A's game I saw an owl or a peregrine falcon take a pigeon on the wing. The pigeon was flying across the outfield at dusk, shortly after the game had started, when this fast, silent bird hopped off a light standard and chased the pigeon down. The predator raced up behind the pigeon and snatched it out of the air and took it up to another light standard to eat it. My companion and I just looked at each other and said, "wow."