Results tagged “birds”

Photo by Troy Holden.

"Stepfather Factory" by Plug1/What I'm Seeing.

Flickr photog andertho captured nature in action above the Land's End Trail, this hawk gathering twigs for her nest.

Let Ann-Margaret sooth your soul. Because after hearing this news, you're gonna need it. See, Swoops, the adorable and infamous blackbird who terrorized passersby from her perch outside City National Bank at Front and California streets, is gone. Or, so says a City National Bank employee who had a clear view of Swoops from his desk, who notices his absence this week.

"Pigeon, out" by The Inadvertent Gardener. Taken at Yerba Buena Gardens.

Swoops caught on tape!

Have you had your head pecked while lunching or lollygagging downtown? This might be the reason: A tiny, adorable, rapscallion of a blackbird has been tormenting pedestrians in San Francisco's financial district as of late. The little bird, christened Swoops, has been "guarding his nest in a behavior experts call 'mobbing.'"

Yesterday afternoon, one of the young female falcons that adorn the roof at San Jose City Hall (named Ilahay, which is "angel" in Persian) took her first flight. According to the Mercury News, the falcon "flew over the Martin Luther King Jr. library with ease, but had a little difficulty on her first landing." While reporting on the flight progress of said baby bird's siblings, the Mercury News goes on to call the Ilahay's mother a slut, saying, "Falcon siblings Kya, Tierra and Veer -- all named by San Jose school children -- have not yet been as brave as their sister yet, and have stayed on the 18th floor ledge of City Hall, where their mother and her series of boyfriends and offspring were first noted in 2007." What a tramp. Anyway, bird watchers have since swamped Falcon Cam in record numbers, eager to see the famed bird's flying.

Wimbledon, that top-drawer tennis championship played on grass way over on the other side of the pond, is currently underway. What's more, it's coming under fire for "using marksmen to shoot down dive-bombing pigeons" interfering with the matches on Centre Court.

Although the National Transportation Safety Board has yet to release its report on the causes of last year's crash, today the pilot of the Cosco Busan, John Joseph Cota of Petaluma, was charged in federal court. The feds, it seems, found him in violation of two federal laws when he accidentally steered the container ship into the Bay Bridge on November 9 2007, which then released 53,000 gallons of oil into the bay.

Oh man, are you kidding? This is terrible. Not to get all tugging-the-heart strings today, but this spill is much worse than initially reported yesterday. This oil covered bird above was found at Fort Baker cove in Sausalito today. It seems that the Marin Headlands are getting crazy sloshed with oil on their shores. (The aerial shots of the spill on SFGate are jaw-dropping.) A Golden Gate National Recreation Area ranger claims that the...