This weekend, hundreds of bird enthusiasts flocked to a quiet southside Berkeley neighborhood to catch a glimpse of a beautiful North American breeding bird that has never before been sighted in Alameda County.
The colorful Painted Redstart was still in the Elmwood neighborhood this morning, flitting between three large trees located on three adjacent streets.
Read all about it at Berkeleyside.
Berkeleyside is Berkeley, California’s independently owned local news site.
Birds are singing. Children are laughing and playing in patches of sunlight. And I am strolling through large fields of grass here at Berkeley’s San Pablo Park, aiming my camera at flocks of finches, sparrows — anything with wings — looking for flashes of sapphire blue.
“Are you here for the bluebirds?” asks a friendly father, lifting his gaze from his daughter’s stroller. Only one pair of bluebirds has moved into this popular neighborhood park, but they are well known and well loved.
“In 20 years, I can think, maybe twice, of when I ran into western bluebirds in a town like Berkeley,” says Rusty Scalf, a tall, red-headed birdwatcher known in city circles as the “Bluebird Guy.” In fact, he is a trip leader for the Audubon Society and an expert at spotting and identifying birds.
Read more at Berkeleyside.
Berkeleyside is Berkeley, California’s independently owned local news site.
Photographer Elaine Miller Bond didn’t have far to go to take these beautiful photographs of a coyote and a red-shouldered hawk. They were shot right here in Tilden Regional Park late last year. Read her descriptions of the encounters:
My eyes went straight to this coyote, crouching low in the grass, when I drove my usual road home. I pulled my car onto the shoulder, and surprisingly, the coyote seemed unfazed. It took leaping bounds; it dug with its paws; it waved its tail side to side as it stuck its snout down a hole — part puppylike, much bigger part: predator. The coyote pounced again, pressing its forepaws to the ground, and then threw its head back.
When it turned back my way, I saw that it was gnawing on a burrowing rodent, which a scientist later told me was a species of vole. For a photographer who spent months documenting the lives of prairie dogs (another burrowing rodent), I delighted in this visit to other side of the grass.
For more amazing images by photographer Elaine Miller Bond, continue at Berkeleyside.
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
