Super Bowl Sunday

What do you do on Super Bowl Sunday?  Do you watch the game?  Do you use it as an opportunity for an adventure knowing most people will be at game watching the game?

Brown Pelican -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA

Sora

I've done both.  Sometimes Jim hosts Super Bowl parties and I go over to his house to watch the game.  I'm more likely to do that if a local team is involved.  We don't have cable at home but we have an HD antennae, so I can watch the World Series, the NBA Finals, major golf tournaments and a number of NFL games.  That's about all there is for sports on regular television anymore.  I'm not all that into watching sports anyway.  I like listening to sports on the radio.

Willet & Marbled Godwit -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA

One of the great things about summer road trips is finding baseball broadcasts while driving.  I'm a Giants fan, so I'll listen to their games whenever possible.  Padres.  Dodgers.  Angels.  Diamondbacks.  Rockies.  Mariners.  I've listened to all of their broadcasts.  Hanging out at the campsite drinking a beer with the game on while cooking up a little dinner, tough to beat that scenario.

AT&T Ballpark, San Francisco, CA

OK, I'm way off topic.

Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday.  The San Francisco Forty-Niners hosted the Super Bowl down in Santa Clara.  I don't know why they aren't called the Santa Clara Forty-Niners now, their stadium is roughly forty miles from San Francisco.  Whatever.  I headed over to the City to watch the game at a party at my friend's house over there.  I left early thinking the traffic might be bad.  It wasn't.  No problem, that gave me a chance to take some pictures.

Formerly Simpson Bible College, San Francisco, CA

Simpson Back in the Day

I got together with my wife at Simpson Bible College in San Francisco in the mid-eighties.  That's where I met my friend Jim, also.  It was a small college with just over two hundred students.  I stopped by for a few pictures.  I'm not at all into religion anymore (nor is my wife or Jim), but this place is still kind of special.  The entire school and the dorms were in this one building.  It would not be an exaggeration to say this was a tight little community.  The current occupants of the building (the college moved to Redding in the late eighties) have paved over every square inch of the place, but it used to be an attractive campus.  Oh well.  It was still fun to see the old building.

Ocean Beach, San Francisco, CA

I headed out to Ocean Beach before making my way to the Super Bowl party.  We've had wonderful winter weather lately, but that was nowhere in sight on Sunday.  There wasn't a cloud in the sky.  I hate blue skies when taking pictures.  Nothing to be done about it, though.  The Great Highway runs along Ocean Beach and some of it has crumbled into the sea in the last couple of decades.  The dunes I took this picture from extended out much farther toward the ocean thirty years ago,

Man, I'm old.

Mark's Back Yard, San Francisco, CA

Anyway, the Super Bowl party was fun.  I didn't watch much of the game.  It was a fun day, all in all.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline

Neighborhood Critters

January 24, 2016

I feel like I've been neglecting the neighborhood wildlife lately.  It's winter, I should be out collecting those local bird pictures.  I haven't been doing that.

I've been a little under the weather over the last week.  I figured if I wasn't up for a decent day trip I could at least get out and at least make up for a little lost local time.

So, let me introduce you to my neighbors.

Western Gull -- Oakland/Alameda Estuary, Alameda, CA

Bufflehead

I live a block from the Oakland/Alameda Estuary.  As you can imagine, we see a lot of seagulls.  I don't take a lot of pictures of seagulls, though.  They're too damned hard to identify.  I keep my out for easy ones.  Ring-billed gulls.  California gulls.  Western Gulls.  Adult gulls, no juveniles.  I've got no chance with juveniles.

Bufflehead -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA

Brush Rabbit

Rabbits and ground squirrels are common on the shoreline.  Brush rabbits can be found just about anywhere while black-tailed jackrabbits stick to a particular fenced-in are of the MLK Shoreline.  At night they seem to spread out across the entire fenced-in area, otherwise they tend to stick to the back corner.

Black-tailed Jackrabbit -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA

What keeps the rabbit population in check?  Poachers, for one.  I've heard stories of shotgun shells being found in the rabbit corner and the population being decimated only to rebound in a few months.  I'm not sure if there's anything to those stories.  Northern harriers are commonly seen in the area, as is the occasional cooper's hawk.  I expect the main cap on the potential rabbit population growth is this particular red-tailed hawk shown in the picture below.  It's rare to visit the area near Arrowhead Marsh in the morning and not see this individual bird, and he/she has been there for at least three years.  I've even seen the bird eating a rabbit in a tree.

Red-tailed Hawk -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA

Greater White-fronted Goose

Canada geese are always around in winter.  Sometimes a few greater white-fronted geese will stop by as well.  Last year one had an injured foot and stayed for the entire winter.

Canada Goose -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA

Common Goldeneye

Shorebirds are plentiful on the shoreline.  Like gulls, I tend to avoid shooting shorebirds because they can be difficult to identify.  Some aren't difficult and some are even kind of exciting.  The shoreline is one of the few places one can find a ridgway's rail.  I didn't see any ridgway's rails on Sunday, but I saw a few sora's and even a couple of virginia rails.

Sora -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA

Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA

My favorite inhabitants of the shoreline are the burrowing owls.  It takes a little luck to see one.  They're only around in winter and I've only seen them early in the morning.  They look like large potatoes with big yellow eyes.  They tend to hide behind the burrow mounds so I often can only see their heads.

Burrowing Owl -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA

Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, CA