Picking Off Thistle
Saturday May 14 was another Stewardship Day in the Native Plant Area. Among the volunteers who showed up to work
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Two Cormorants
When I first saw a flock of cormorants on the North Basin cove, an experienced birder told me that it
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Pecking Average
In a recent post I noted the sandpiper’s method of speed-pecking, and hypothesized that the bird might only get a
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Birding by the Numbers
This website includes photos and often videos of more than 100 species of birds encountered in the park (“List of
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Butterflies and Budgets: Parks Commission Meets
The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission’s session last night strained to find a middle ground between protection of endangered butterflies
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A Painter’s Park
More than a year in the making, the painting of selected Chavez Park creatures by Minnesota artist Bill Reynolds is
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Bird Gets Worm
There’s an iconic photo of this bird pulling a long worm from the mud, and I was disappointed that the
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Bug in Beak
This Red-winged Blackbird female has a bug in her beak. That’s a clue that she’s got chicks to feed, else
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Heron, Gopher, Dog
As a photographer, I was lucky. The Great Blue Heron stalked slowly westward on the meadow in the southeast corner
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Weed Ceremony
These big grebes — both Clark’s and Western — have an elaborate set of courtship rituals. One of them is
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Mixed Pipers
A flock of sandpipers foraging on the mud looks at first like multiple copies of the identical bird. And some
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Semi What?
I was watching a flock of some kind of sandpipers speed-pecking away on the wet sand when suddenly a different
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Scaup Take Off
When I first saw the dense rafts of Scaup on the water, I fantasized that they would all take off
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Op-Ed: Save Chavez Park
Berkeleyside, the free local online daily, yesterday published my op-ed titled “The Berkeley Marina Plan Would Destroy Cesar Chavez Park.”
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Erika’s Poppies
Photographer Erika St. John captured these images on the south margin of the park. They illustrate some of the diversity
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Frida Strikes Again
The disciple of Frida Kahlo who made her debut in the park with an angry outburst earlier this month (“Angry
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Looking Back (5)
These concluding selections from photographer Emilie Keas’ treasury of park photos show some of the most familiar birds and small
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April Flowers
The construction crews that have spent months scraping and paving the parking circle at the end of Spinnaker Way, and
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Looking Back (4)
Photographer Emilie Keas’ collection of park photos includes these images of a favorite subject: the Red-winged Blackbirds. She captured both
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