This week: Land stewardship in the East Bay, tracking birds in the South Bay, and 50 years of wine in Napa Valley. Also, tamale season, unconventional homes, a local middle school record player, the Valkyries DJ’s new Oakland club, and new work by ‘90s Mission School artists.

Tamale season

For many Mission cooks, tamale season starts at La Palma Mexicatessen, where they buy fresh masa for the holidays. One longtime figure in that tradition is Simona Padilla, who ran a meat market at 24th and York for 15 years and cooked Mexican dishes for her neighborhood.

Over time, her food was also served at events for the Mexican consul, then–Mayor Gavin Newsom, and local journalism fundraisers. In a recent video with filmmaker Hélène Goupil, Padilla shows how she makes tamales for Christmas, grounding the dish in La Palma’s masa and the Mission’s home-based cooking traditions. — Mission Local

Finding the sweet spot

DJ Lady Ryan, official DJ for the Golden State Valkyries, co-founded Golden Ratio, a new queer-owned bar and lounge in downtown Oakland. Alongside hospitality leader Dennise Acio, she has shaped the space with years of Bay Area nightlife experience and a focus on community-driven programming.

Events include karaoke and comedy nights, soul line dancing, and rotating DJ sets. — San Francisco Bay Time

Needle drop

At Aptos Middle School in San Francisco, librarian Gina Cargas is setting up a vinyl listening station built around a vintage Newcomb record player. After putting out a casual call for records, she was met with dozens of offers from neighbors eager to donate albums for a new generation.

Cargas says many students encounter music as short social media clips, often without context, and the Newcomb turntable creates space to listen to full albums and talk about artists and genres together. The station is now taking shape inside the Aptos Middle School library. — Coyote Media Collective

Then, now, and still here

At Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bay Area Then looks back at the Mission School scene of the 1990s while showcasing the collective's current body of work. Guest curator Eungie Joo brings together 21 artists linked to that era, mixing new work with familiar names like Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen to recreate the restless, DIY energy that once defined Bay Area art spaces.

Several pieces confront current political realities, including Gaza, along with the art world's response to controversial works, including YBCA's new leadership. The show runs through January 25. — Chronicle

A table turned

In 1976, a blind tasting in Paris quietly upended wine-world assumptions when Napa Valley bottles outscored French standbys, shifting the region’s future in a single afternoon. Seven wineries were part of that moment — Chateau Montelena, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Clos du Val, Freemark Abbey, Heitz Cellar, Mayacamas Vineyards, and Spring Mountain Vineyard — each still tied to the landscapes that shaped those early vintages.

As the 50th anniversary approaches in 2026, the group is marking the occasion with coordinated tastings, historical tours, and food events that trace both the wines and the people behind them. Programming rolls out across Napa Valley throughout the year, centered at the original estates that helped put the region on the global map. — 7 x 7

Rooms that remember

In a new book shaped by years of travel and documentation, Berkeley-based filmmakers and writers Kirsten Dirksen and Nicolás Boullosa profile dozens of unconventional homes and their owners. Life-Changing Homes: Eco-Friendly Designs That Promote Well-Being moves from hempcrete roundhouses in Gold Country to shanty boats and restored housebarns, tracing how people’s sense of place informs how they build.

Dirksen and Boullosa draw on their Faircompanies archive and their own nomadic years before settling into a renovated 1908 cottage in South Berkeley. — Marin Independent Journal

A piece held in place

Five acres on Mount Diablo have been secured from future development through a land donation made by Bob Nunn in memory of his father, Ron Nunn, a longtime East Contra Costa County farmer and conservation-minded land steward. The parcel, known as the Nunn-Paulsen inholding, fills a small but critical gap inside Mount Diablo State Park, where privately owned land can fracture habitats and complicate long-term protection.

Save Mount Diablo finalized the donation in just over three months, highlighting the land’s notable mix of oak woodland, serpentine rock, and wildlife corridor linking the park to Black Diamond Mines. The nonprofit plans to transfer the parcel to California State Parks under a new state law designed to speed up park land acquisitions, with several other inholdings on the mountain still in view. — Bay Area News Group

Morning chorus, competing engines

At the Coyote Creek Field Station in Alviso, a North San Jose neighborhood at the edge of the Bay, bird banding — briefly capturing birds to record data and release them — begins in near-quiet before traffic noise spills in from nearby freeways. Coyote Creek runs from the Diablo Range through San Jose and ends here, where wetlands sit alongside highways, rail lines, and flight paths.

Researchers are paying closer attention to how constant and sudden sounds affect birds’ stress and communication, particularly for threatened South Bay wetland species. Conservationists working in places like the Salt Pond Restoration Project are now factoring sound into habitat protection as restoration continues in one of the region’s most industrialized ecological zones. — Monterey Herald

Top image: Rigo 23, Terra Nullius, 2025; Robbie Sweeny/Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Previously: Field Notes: Weed Box Set, Christmas Birds, Jewish Chinatown Christmas, and Oakland Ballet at 60

This week: Trans BIPOC memorabilia through the ages, Oakland Ballet turns 60, Southern BBQ in the East Bay, and a Sonoma coast road trip. Plus, a refuge for Jews on Christmas, the Christmas Bird Count, an inside look at SF’s “Holiday House,” and a “holiday jay” box set.

Holiday jays

A Northern California cannabis collective has put together a holiday gift box aimed squarely at weed connoisseurs. Emerald Triangle Craft’s 12 Jays of X-Mas bundles a dozen one-gram pre-rolls from farms across the region, spanning sativas, indicas, and hybrids, each labeled by grower and strain.

The packaging, illustrated by artist Mabel Alcock, highlights the farmers as much as the product, framing the set as a snapshot of the Emerald Triangle’s small-scale cannabis economy. The box is available at a variety of Bay Area dispensaries. — Broke-Ass Stuart

Leaps through time

Oakland Ballet marks its 60th year in motion, shaped by ambition, collapse, reinvention, and a stubborn commitment to the city it calls home. Founded in 1965, the company weathered national tours, lean years, a mid-2000s shutdown, and a revival under artistic director Graham Lustig, who has expanded the repertoire while keeping the organization afloat.

Recent seasons have included culturally specific works like Luna Mexicana and Dancing Moons Festival, with The Nutcracker remaining both an artistic anchor and a financial lifeline. The Nutcracker runs December 20 and 21 at the Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. — The Oaklandside

Counting the flyway

Now through January 5, the Audubon Society is inviting the public to take part in its annual Christmas Bird Count, one of the country’s longest-running wildlife surveys, with a couple Bay Area events coming up.

Additionally, photographer Dick Evans and wilderness guide and author Hannah Hindley are celebrating the release of In the Shadow of the Bridge: Birds of the Bay Area, which maps the region as a key stop along the Pacific Flyway. Evans and Hindley will speak at Book Passage in Corte Madera, 51 Tamal Vista Boulevard, on January 17. — Bay Area News Group

Storybook lights on the hill

With the Castro’s beloved Tom & Jerry house now dark, another longtime standout can be found just up the hill in Corona Heights. The so-called Holiday House at 45 Upper Terrace, also known as the Storybook House, goes all in for Christmas, with a toy train looping above the enclosed front porch and Santa climbing the ladder outside.

The owners, a retired gay couple, are known for decorating their home for every holiday and recently gave a video tour showing off the house’s whimsical details, including an elevator. They bought the home for $800,000 in 1997, and today it’s estimated to be worth between $8 million and $10 million. — San Francisco Bucket List

A Jewish Christmas tradition

For more than three decades, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy has given Jews in San Francisco (and many gentiles, we imagine) somewhere to gather each Christmas: a Chinese restaurant, a full crowd, and a sharp lineup. Created and hosted by Lisa Geduldig, the long-running series has built a sense of continuity and community that’s carried the show through generations.

This year’s headliner is veteran stand-up Elayne Boosler, known for her dry delivery and political bite, joined by Orion Levine, Amanda Marks, and Geduldig. Runs December 24–26, Imperial Palace, 818 Washington Street — The Bay Area Reporter

Lives in full color

The GLBT Historical Society Museum’s current exhibition co-presented with the city of Richmond’s Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive, I Live the Life I Love Because I Love the Life I Live, traces the lives and work of Black, Indigenous, and other trans and gender-nonconforming people of color across a century of Bay Area and national history. Photographs, performance ephemera, activist materials, and personal portraits move between the stage and daily life, from Finocchio’s cabaret performers to community organizers who fought for care and visibility during the AIDS crisis.

Figures like Stormé DeLarverie, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and members of the Filipino Task Force on AIDS appear alongside lesser-known artists and organizers, with an emphasis on joy, labor, and persistence. GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th Street, San Francisco’s Castro District. — San Francisco Bay Times

Smoke and memory

On a corner in the East Bay city of Richmond, CJ’s BBQ and Fish has been anchoring the neighborhood for three decades, run by nearly 80-year-old Charles “CJ” Evans, who still works the pits and the prep tables himself. The menu reflects his version of California-Southern barbecue, shaped by family roots in Arkansas, wartime Richmond history, and years of feeding shipyard workers, church folks, and regulars who never stopped coming back.

CJ’s BBQ and Fish now serves hundreds of slabs of ribs a week across its Richmond and Vallejo locations, remaining a steady fixture in a city that’s changed around it. — KQED

North on one

Highway 1 through Sonoma County offers a steady sequence of working ranch land, exposed coastline, and built-in stopping points that reward a slow drive. After Valley Ford, the road runs past Bodega Bay, where Bodega Head provides bluff walks and seasonal whale watching, then hugs the shoreline through state park land with beaches and pullouts at places like Wright’s Beach, Shell Beach, and the Kortum Trail.

Jenner marks a visual shift, with the Russian River spreading out before meeting the Pacific, harbor seals on the sandbar, and viewpoints near River’s End that invite a longer pause. North of town, the highway climbs into high green cliffs toward Fort Ross and Salt Point State Park, then eases into Sea Ranch, where low-profile homes and signed public trails lead to the bluffs before the road crosses into Mendocino County. — Marin Independent Journal

Top Image: Oakland Ballet/Facebook

Previously: Field Notes: Ube, Latkes, Native Plants of the Presidio, and Sarah Winchester’s Architectural Vision

The dark-sided flycatcher, a small brown bird from Asia, made its California debut last week when it veered off-route and spent three days at the nature preserve behind Google’s Mountain View campus, attracting birding enthusiasts from across the country.

As the Mountain View Voice reports, a couple of birders first spotted the flycatcher the morning of Wednesday, September 17 at Charleston Retention Basin, a six-acre marsh and nature trail that runs adjacent to Google’s campus.

The outlet reports that the sighting was immediately listed on the eBird list-serve, and word quickly spread. Within a few hours, 40 birders had shown up hoping to catch a glimpse. The next day there were 80 visitors, and over the course of three days, birders from as far as Michigan, New York, and Washington State hopped on planes to capture the tiny celebrity on camera.

The Mountain View Voice spoke to Matthew Dodder of the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance who said the bird had previously never been spotted in the lower 48 states, and there have only been a few sightings in Alaska. He said the flycatcher likely took a wrong turn when heading south along its usual migratory route from the Siberian region to China or the Himalayas.

Per the Voice, Google also took part in the flycatcher’s big welcome, inviting visitors to upload photos via a QR code. The company also provided parking and refreshments.

The last flycatcher sighting was reportedly on Friday evening when birders speculate it either moved somewhere else in the area or left altogether, per the Voice. Perhaps it gained enough respite to get back on its course.

As a commenter on the Voice emphasized, “protected spots like the Charleston Retention Basin can serve as sanctuaries for wildlife, welcoming unexpected visitors from far away. By preserving and restoring these natural spaces, we not only support the species we already know but we also open the door to surprises!”

Top image: Kevin Shen, ABA Birds and Birding Group/Facebook

In this week’s Field Notes: a live pipe organ at Legion of Honor, stone legacy in Mill Valley, Recology’s Artist in Residence exhibit, and an Aquatic Park doc. Also: Amy Tan with Christian Cooper, teen film 'The Jar', and Sacramento’s music archive.

Rodin, chandeliers, and a hundred-year-old organ

Every Saturday at 4 p.m., the Legion of Honor fills its Rodin Gallery with the sound of a 100-year-old pipe organ.

Jonathan Dimmick playing the Spreckels Organ at the Legion of Honor, 2002. Photograph by Gary Sexton

Built into the museum itself, its 4,500+ pipes are tucked behind chandeliers and sculptures, designed to resonate through the marble rotunda. The concerts are free with admission, turning a quiet weekend visit into something grander. — Secret San Francisco

Sculpting history in Mill Valley

Mill Valley’s O’Hanlon Center for the Arts pays tribute to its founder, the late sculptor Richard O’Hanlon, with Dialogue with Stone, a display of his monumental stone sculptures, sketches, and archival photos.

Fabrice Florin/Flickr

Alongside it, the Dreams and Visions exhibit explores O’Hanlon’s life, techniques, and inspirations — including geology and astronomy, providing context to his body of work as well as his hillside studio and its surrounding landscape, which O’Hanlon and his wife Ann converted from an old dairy farm in 1942.

The grounds feature outdoor works, some now home to lichens, inviting visitors to wander through both art and history. Runs through August 31, with guided tours available. — Bay Area News Group

From trash to treasure: 35 years of Recology AIR

San Francisco’s Recology Artist-in-Residence program turns the city’s garbage into gallery-ready art. For 35 years, artists have transformed discarded materials — from meat grinders to hair clippings — into striking, unexpected works.

The anniversary show at 1275 Minnesota Street highlights 35 years of creativity, with over 250 artists’ pieces on display. Free to visit through August 30, it’s a uniquely SF experience that makes you look twice at what we throw away. — Recology Artists in Residence

Ship-shaped SF landmark gets its due

The iconic Maritime Museum, formerly known as the Aquatic Park Bathhouse — a 1939 WPA-built bayfront building — has a new spotlight in KQED’s documentary A Balcony on the World.

Premiering August 22, the film traces the bathhouse from public gathering space to WWII Army post to museum, highlighting its murals, glazed-tile sculpture, and restoration projects. Catch it on KQED August 22 at 8 p.m., with re-airings August 23 at 2 a.m. and August 30 at 6 p.m. — SF Examiner

10 peaks, one unforgettable walk

Peak2Peak returns Saturday, September 13, for its 21st year, sending participants on a 10-mile urban adventure through San Francisco’s hidden stairways, quiet streets, and secret viewpoints. Guided groups enjoy coffee, lunch, and snacks along the way, plus a commemorative keepsake at the finish.

Even locals will spot corners of the city they didn’t know existed — just be ready for plenty of hills, stairs, and some serious sightseeing. Tickets are limited and must be purchased in advance. — WalkSF

Amy Tan and Christian Cooper to host delightful nature journaling conference in Palo Alto

Amy Tan, Bay Area born and raised, took NatGeo host Christian Cooper on a birding tour of the region — from Bolinas cliffs to Point Reyes marshes, and of course her own backyard. Along the way, they commiserated over dog owners who ignore leash laws and trample birds’ nesting grounds. Cooper — host of Extraordinary Birder and author of Better Living Through Birding and Urban Owls — knows his birds and the rules they deserve.

On September 14, the pair will share the mic at the 7th Annual Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference at the Foster Museum in Palo Alto, live and online. — Amy Tan

Teens turn summer into a city-wide film set

Seventy-one Bay Area teens spent four weeks making THE JAR, a feature-length chase through Golden Gate Park, Chinatown, and the city’s steep streets. Guided by Joe Talbot (The Last Black Man in San Francisco), they rotated through writing, directing, and cinematography, learning pro-level gear and techniques.

The premiere at the Great Star Theater earlier this month drew a line up Jackson Street, and the Q&A revealed the city’s usual hazards: traffic, curious bystanders, and one very unhelpful passerby. Beyond the polished shots, campers walked away with friendships and creative collaborators that might last a lifetime. — Mission Local

A shed full of music history

In a suburban shed outside Sacramento, Shayne Stacy sits among towers of VHS, cassettes, and reel-to-reels — nearly 20,000 recordings of Bay Area punk, thrash, indie, and metal shows. He started filming local gigs in the ’80s, trading tapes through the mail, and now digitizes rare early footage of Nirvana, Green Day, as well as long-lost basement bands.

Musicians, fans, and former roadies drop off forgotten boxes, and he cleans them up, uploads them online for free, and quietly preserves decades of Northern California music history, one tape at a time. — KQED Arts

North Beach movie mash-up

Every third Wednesday of the month, Films with Friends takes over three venues at the same time in North Beach for a unique and festive night of co-occurring film screenings. This month, live male strippers will be on hand to accompany Savoy Tivoli’s screening of Magic Mike. Alternatively, take a deep dive into Mazatec psychedelic plants at Live Worm’s screening of Salvia Divinorum.

Families should definitely head to Piazza Pellegrini for the 1971 classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. — Renegade Cinema

Walnut Creek cafe in the national spotlight

Recently recognized as one of the top new women-owned cafes in the country, Prologue Coffee & Tea quietly thrives inside Walnut Creek’s public library. Vietnamese coffee gets a twist with banana milk, and banh mi sandwiches are crafted from house-made spreads and family recipes.

Owner Thuy Nguyen left banking to open the shop just over a year ago, and locals — plus visitors from across the Bay — are quickly discovering this unexpected gem. — KGO

Top image: Tariq Stone, A Little Bit of This, 2024. Photo by Tariq Stone; Model: Isabel Li; Production Design: Emily Hernandez; Makeup: Niku Radan; Production Assistant: Theo Garvey

Previously: Field Notes: Prelinger Library’s Treasures, SF to Guerneville by Clipper, Historic Lanterns Relit

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• San Francisco State completed its new affordable housing project to house over 700 students. The project was the first to be funded through a new state grant aimed at easing the student housing crisis.
• Bird-watching is gaining popularity among Bay Area youth, who say the hobby connects them to nature, community, and improves their mental health. [KQED]

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• Oakland police are seeking the public’s help in finding 21-year-old Heaven “Milli” McGee, who was last seen on January 21 in Stockton. [KRON4]
• New indie drama Outerlands, SF Film Festival's closing night selection on Sunday, puts the Richmond District in the spotlight. [SFGate]

Image: The Tesla showroom on Saturday, April 26 following the People Over Profit protest; Leanne Maxwell/SFist

The Oakland Zoo over the weekend successfully recaptured five out of six exotic birds that escaped their damaged enclosure last week, after a big eucalyptus tree came crashing down and tore the netting.

We learned last week that the Oakland Zoo had six escapees following Tuesday's treacherous windstorm, which brought down multiple trees on the zoo grounds and did some damage to the zoo's new aviary. The six birds that escaped were an African hooded vulture (pictured above), two pied crows, and three superb starlings.

All the birds were thought to be hovering close to the zoo grounds and the zoo said they expected to recover all six, and as of Sunday, they had brought five them back into enclosures.

As NBC Bay Area reports, the three starlings, which are native to East Africa, all flew back into their habitat of their own volition on Thursday. And on Friday, zoo officials were able to entice Oliver, the hooded vulture, into the flamingo habitat using some "tasty treats." The vulture had remained on the zoo grounds the whole time.

The pied crows, however, got a little more adventurous. One of them, named Deauville, was spotted in a neighborhood about two miles from the zoo. On Saturday, zookeepers were able, with the help of a homeowner, to lure him into a house and get him back to the zoo.

Some of that process was captured on video, tweeted below.

Deauville's friend and fellow pied crow, Diego, has still not been located. Zoo officials are telling Oakland residents to alert them if he's spotted — and with his white belly he will stand out from other crows.

"If you spot him, please don’t try to catch him – he’s a very shy bird that startles easily – but DO call our rescue hotline (510-703-8986)," they said on Twitter.

In other, sadder news, the zoo said goodbye on Sunday to its 46-year-old African elephant Lisa, who had lived at the zoo since 1979. Lisa suffered debilitating arthritis, and the difficult decision was made to euthanize her over the weekend.

Previously: Oakland Zoo Sees More Storm Damage, This Time Resulting In Escaped Exotic Birds

You may have missed it in the crush of news about protests across the country and the globe last week, but it was also #BlackBirdersWeek, in which black birders and naturalists took to social media to share the photographs of their hobby.

The story of black bird-watcher Christian Cooper, who encountered some overt racism in Central Park as he was out communing with nature, became a kind of preamble to the last two weeks of unrest in America. No one was killed or injured by police in the incident, thankfully, but the implication of the unfortunately familiar tale was clear: As a white woman, Amy Cooper believed she could harness her societal privilege to call the cops on a black man who was speaking to her out of turn, and telling her to leash her unleashed dog.

The act of doing this, along with any entitled display by white women in public, is now a meme-embraced idiom: #Karening.

Way back in 2005, artist, musician, and avid bird photographer Walter Kitundu was living in San Francisco and working in the artist-in-residency program at the Exploratorium. He had a longtime passion of watching birds, and he took a shine to a red-tailed hawk whom he named Patch. He followed the hawk around Pacific Heights, observing him in the typically Caucasian environs of Alta Vista Park, and then had to contend, on multiple occasions, with white people questioning his right to be there — sitting still, with a camera and binoculars, watching the bird.

The incidents prompted him to put up posters — a bit sarcastic in tone but he says they were actual public service announcements, not mock-PSAs as they've been called — informing the Pac Heights neighborhood of his harmless presence. "The police were called on me so many times, I made this sign."

"Do not call the police unless you see him being accosted by another party," the sign reads. "Save your fear for something that counts."

SFist wrote about the signs here, in 2006, and in 2008, we celebrated with Kitundu as he became a MacArthur "genius grant" recipient.

As black birders became a topic of national conversation, the Washington Post interviewed Kitundu — now a resident of Chicago — about his experience in San Francisco and how it colored his view of the Central Park incident from two weeks ago. He was vocal on Twitter about how inspired he felt by Black Birders Week, and how it "greatly expanded [a] sense of community" among black birders, who are usually pretty solitary when they do their nature walks.

Kitundu tells the Post,

I think as a black person, as a person of color in this country, every time you walk out the door, there’s always calculus running in the background about how to present, how to keep yourself safe. It’s a muscle that’s well exercised by people of color in this country. I can’t really think of anything more wholesome than standing under a tree and watching a hummingbird build her nest, but I think if our activities fall outside of the framework of possibility that’s established for us by the white imagination, then we’re at risk.

I didn't have dog. I didn't have a partner. I didn't have a stroller. I didn't really fit into the generalized idea of who the park was for. And I was black in an affluent neighborhood. And I was being still for long periods of time. I feel like the white people in the park who called the police were owners of limited imaginations that were stunted by racism.

Kitundu goes on to say that Black Birders Week helps to shine a light on those nerdy communities of black people who don't fit into many white people's stereotypes — and how that oftentimes quiet attitude of alien-ness has likely deprived the world of many talented specialist in fields they didn't feel welcome in.

"We won’t know the knowledge and perspectives that could have shaped the future of those institutions and the people who might now be in positions of leadership if not for the legacy and tenacity of racism in this country," he says.

And for the institutions, academic and otherwise, that ostensibly want more diversity but fail to achieve it, he says, "It’s about addressing the nature of those organizations, not bringing people into a space that is still riddled with the same issues and toxicity. You have to change the space. Because otherwise you're inviting people to contend with all of those issues."

Follow him on Instagram here for many lovely shots of birds.

Recreational drones are illegal in San Francisco public parks, but rumors that a drone killed a hawk in Dolores Park are unconfirmed and drawing skeptical responses from bird experts.

For the occasional lovely aerial video that drones are able to provide, the flying surveillance devices are also rightfully blamed for their many scourges like causing power outages, crashing into farmers’ markets, screwing up helicopter rescues, and disrupting hanky-panky between migratory animals. So the Bay Area has been quick to heap scorn on an unidentified drone flyer who allegedly flew a drone into a red-tailed hawk and killed the feathered raptor in Dolores Park on Christmas Eve. But the Chronicle looked looked into the story today, and their reporting raises questions over whether a drone was actually responsible.

"Whether a drone could kill a bird? I have my doubts," said Randall Museum animal care attendant Dominik Mosur, noting that the bird’s body did not show signs of a drone impact. "It’s possible that maybe the bird attacked the drone or that the drone spooked the bird. Did the drone collide with it?"

Hoodline originally reported the drone story last week, noting that SF Animal Care & Control (SFACC) confirmed finding a hawk’s body in the park after being alerted on December 24. But a post blew up on the rumor mill known as Nextdoor alleging a drone was responsible, with comments varying between condemnation of a supposedly careless drone pilot and drone defenders claiming the unlikelihood of the machine’s culpability in killing the hawk.

The evidence remains uncertain. The original complaint to SFACC claimed a drone was responsible, but SFACC has not confirmed this version of events. One person present told SFACC that he’d heard a drone hit the bird, but acknowledges he didn’t actually see this. The department’s Lt. Eleanor Sadler, whom you may know as Officer Edith on Twitter, acknowledges the bird’s body had no open wounds.

Just one dead hawk is a fairly big deal in San Francisco, as the Randall Museum estimates that there are but “20 to 30 red-tailed hawks” in the city. Drone enthusiasts are advised to keep those things out of parks and to not fly the contraptions around hawks; drone culture detractors must still patiently wait for the day when electromagnetic drone-zapping guns are available to the general public.

Related: $5,000 Reward for Golden Gate Park Hawk Shooter [SFist]

Image: torbakhopper via Flickr

Infrastructure projects getting delayed by endangered or protected species, fish, fowl and otherwise, are not unique to the Bay Area. But currently there's a big bridge improvement project on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge getting held up by a single, teeny, unhatched hummingbird egg that was discovered in a tiny nest among some trees on the Richmond side that were scheduled for removal. As KQED reports, it's not a huge deal, and it's not going to cause any big cost overruns because workers can start on some other aspects of the project while they wait for this egg to hatch in the next week or two. But it is amazing what one tiny (unborn) hummingbird can do.

The egg belongs to an Anna's hummingbird, which as All About Birds explains is the most common species of hummingbird found along the Pacific Coast. Nonetheless the birds are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which prohibits the removal of eggs, and thus the tree removal must wait. Officials tell KQED that crews are readying to remove about two dozen trees on the Richmond side in order to widen the bridge approach on Interstate 580.

Also part of the project is the addition of bike lanes to the upper deck of the bridge, and the addition of a third eastbound traffic lane on the lower deck to ease traffic congestion.

Metropolitan Transportation Commission spokesman Randy Rentschler tells the station, "We’ve dealt with this on all sorts of things on every project we’ve worked with in the Bay Area."

Audubon California spokesman Garrison Frost also explains that a similar situation involving cormorants has repeatedly held up the deconstruction of the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge. That problem, as the Chronicle reported in 2014, is estimated to be costing Caltrans $33 million on top of every other cost overrun the Bay Bridge's new span has run into, all because nesting cormorants refuse to take up residents in new nesting "condos" built for them beneath the new span at a cost of $1 million. 533 cormorant nests were found on the old span that year, and work crews had to stop work every spring when new eggs were laid. It's unclear how many cormorants they're still dealing with now that much, but not all, of the old span has been dismantled.

Previously: Bay Bridge Bike Path Will Finally, Probably, Open This Sunday

@coolbiRdpics yesterday in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco pic.twitter.com/xIUarZzncH

— Elliot Loh (@Loh) May 7, 2016

Local Twitterer Elliott Loh was hanging out in Golden Gate Park last month when he and some onlookers spotted a blue heron staking out a gopher hole, and making a meal out of one gopher. This is actually a fairly frequent occurrence in the park, which is home to five heron nests, as waterbird biologist Victoria Heyse tells Hoodline, and herons are pretty omnivorous with their prey.

"They like to stalk their prey, so they'll wander around and really go for anything," Heyse says, and that includes fish and frogs as well as rodents.

Gophers are at the larger end of the birds' swallow-able spectrum, though, as you can see from the photo below, and the 2014 video further below shot by a squealing father and daughter team from their car.

Look out for gopher-devouring herons also around Stow Lake, the Palace of Fine Arts, and Lake Merced.

Related: San Francisco Mourns Passing Of The Last Member Of Golden Gate Park's 'Old' Bison Herd

Over in Golden Gate Park, there is a rogue blackbird which, maybe under the pretenses of protecting a nest or maybe because it's just insanely aggressive, has made a habit of pouncing and pecking peoples' scalps. It's straight out of Hitchcock's The Birds, and it is totally frightening/hilarious.

Richmond resident Mila Zinkova spent several days documenting the bird's antics in June, and the Richmond SF blog just posted a video — it's unclear if the bird remains a public threat, but it would seem it probably does, since no other blackbirds behave this way, as Zinkova notes.

Anyway, this was all happening along a well-trod path near Stow Lake, and perhaps still is.

Have any of you, dear readers, had run-ins with this bird whilst jogging? Please let us know.

[Richmond SF]

Hummingbird kicking it at home. Photo by Gerard Livernois.

Photo by Troy Holden.