Birds in my Community Garden

The other morning I was out with my camera in my community garden in San Francisco, and was able to catch photos of some of the birds that spend time there. They are enjoying flowers that are seeding and the active insect life in the garden. While I see birds often while I am gardening, I have never attempted to photograph them, but they are very bold, so it proved easy to do.

Here we have what I think is a grackle, sitting on a trellis made of weathered wood. This guy also was enjoying very much a bird bath that has been set up in one of the garden plots.

A pair of mourning doves were feeding on the ground. They moved around behind plants to try to hide from me, and I followed, silently,until I moved around a plant and found this one standing practically at my feet.

And there are always little flocks of sparrows that fly up when you come upon them. You usually don't see them until they fly. They fly to nearby, higher, places and look at you as if to say, "What are YOU doing here?"

In addition to these bird species, we also see robins, mockingbirds, and there has been an oriole's next a couple of times. And green parrots, in the palm street trees. I feed the robins earthworms or wireworms sometimes. I toss them and the robins run over to pick them up. I love to hear the mockingbirds singing their ever-changing songs. Recently, a noisy mockingbird stayed a few feet from me, perched first on my rasperry trellis, then on structures in neighboring plots, then back to my plot. It scolded loudly for maybe 15 minutes, until I noticed its fledgling hopping about in my 4-foot tall African bue basil shrub, which I was pruning. The baby was trying hard to stay out of my sight. And I thought the parent mockingbird wanted me to go away so it could eat some of my raspberries!