San Francisco Birding - 22 Jul 2015

Brewer's Blackbird

Robin and I flew into San Francisco International Airport this morning via Delta Airlines. She is here for a weekend conference and I'm going to occupy myself with birds. I was glad I had Hertz Gold Membership thru work because there were 3 dozen people standing in line waiting for their cars. I could just head to the garage and go. The lines at Hertz were a sign of things to be, 'cause we soon learned what it was going to be like driving in SF...

Western Gull w/ blue eyes!

We were going to try to drive by the Hilton Union Square then look for something to eat. It was soon very apparent that there are no parking spots in the entire city. So, we drove on and decided to go see Golden Gate Park. Still no place to park, so we drove on to Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the ocean. It turned out to be a great decision because we found a nice restaurant (Beach Chalet Restaurant) with a great view of the ocean, and it even had parking! We ate lunch while I scanned the shoreline for Western and California Gulls, Brandt's Cormorants, and Brown Pelicans.


From there we drove south along the coast and stopped just long enough to get some pics of the numerous Common Ravens and Brewer's Blackbirds hanging out along the coast. I tried to find a Band-tailed Pigeon among a couple dozen Rock Pigeons, but wasn't lucky enough.
Robin then decided that she wanted to see the famous Lombard Street and its twisting turns and steep hill driving. We took it downhill among the hundreds of tourists, and wondered how anyone could live on such steep roads. I think the nearby straight up and down streets were just as bad, especially when GPS kept kicking out while trying to get back to the hotel. Dinner at Johnny Foley's Irish Pub was a nice end to the day.

Common Raven


Rictal bristles are half the length of the culmen (upper bill).
On smaller Chihuahuan Ravens the rictal brushes are more than
half the length of the culmen.

Ocean Beach--Fulton St. to Lincoln Way, San Francisco, California, US
Jul 22, 2015 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Protocol: Traveling
1.0 mile(s)
7 species

Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) (Columba livia (Feral Pigeon))  12
Western Gull (Larus occidentalis)  12
California Gull (Larus californicus)  6
Brandt's Cormorant (Urile penicillatus)  6
Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis)  5
Common Raven (Corvus corax)  6
Brewer's Blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus)  7

View this checklist online at https://ebird.org/checklist/S162127651

This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (https://ebird.org/home)