heron watching in golden gate park

“Its a sight to behold: an elegant four-foot tall heron slowly stalking across the field above the Big Rec baseball diamonds in Golden Gate Park. Suddenly, from a motionless stance, it strikes out and nabs an unsuspecting pocket gopher, swallowing it whole. If youve seen it happen, you wont soon forget it, and if not, this is a prime time for heron sightings. Why? Because up at Stow Lake, they have nests full of hungry mouths to feed.

Great Blue Herons are solitary birds for most of the year, but when mating season arrives in the spring, they pair off and build nests close to one another. Assuming they were successful the previous year, the same pair will often mate year after year, raising chicks in saucer-shaped nests that range from 1.5 to 4 feet across. Nests used over and over like those at Stow Lake tend to be on the larger end of the size scale.

On Saturday morning, volunteers at San Francisco Nature Education had a series of spotting scopes set up just to the right of Stow Lakes boathouse, trained on Heron Island’s towering treetops. The scene was action-packed. Adult herons swooped through the air, chasing one another away from their nests, and every so often the chicks could be seen between tree branches strutting around their nests. Observers estimate the four nesting pairs produced six chicks, which hatched in early April and are now about six weeks old.  .  .  .

Herons can be seen in Golden Gate Park year-round, though individuals are thought to come and go. This year’s chicks and their parents should be visible at Stow Lake’s Heron Island until mid-late June, but if you want the benefit of San Francisco Nature Education’s naturalists and spotting scopes at your disposal, don’t miss the final “Heron Watch” program on Saturday, May 19. Founder Nancy DeStefanis first started documenting the birds’ nesting behavior at Stow Lake in 1993, and now runs a series of interpretive bird walks, field trips, and observation sessions to educate school kids and locals about birds and local ecology.”

To learn more about the herons in Golden Gate Park, see:   Heron Spotting in Golden Gate Park | KQED QUEST.

coyotes (again) in golden gate park

‘Sightings in Golden Gate and other San Francisco parks have increased, and Animal Care and Control is advising all residents to remember that they are not only wild animals, but potentially dangerous as well.

Although coyotes have been in Golden Gate Park since 2007, Animal Care and Control believes that the animals feel particularly threatened right now because it’s pup season. Mother coyotes are most likely defending a den of pups in the area.

Haley Bratton told the San Francisco Chronicle that she frequents Golden Gate Park with her two large pit bulls and regularly sees coyotes near the trails. Last Thursday, however, was not her normal walk in the park when one came within three feet of her, growling and gnashing its teeth.

“Every step we took backward, he took two forward,” she said.

On Tuesday, the Recreation and Park Department announced that it will close trails near JFK Drive. The trails nearest to the north and middle lakes and the bison enclosure will be off-limits to all dogs, possibly until August. Joggers will also be cautioned against visiting the area.

Even if you can’t check out the coyotes for yourself, take a look at a few pictures of the beautiful animals by David Cruz.’

via Coyotes In San Francisco: Sightings In Parks Result In Closed Trails (PHOTOS).

central park, new york (notes): diagnostic lab for an 843-acre patient

Ms. Nelson, lab coordinator for Central Park's natural environment, brews "compost tea" by steeping leaves and wood chips in a 100-gallon container. (photo: New York Times)

It’s always interesting to see what’s going on in the mother park! This is from today’s New York Times:

‘On a recent morning inside a nondescript laboratory building in the middle of Central Park, Tina M. Nelson was watching for signs of trouble. Wearing a cobalt-blue lab coat, Ms. Nelson, who bears the unwieldy title of soil, water and ecology laboratory coordinator for Central Park, ground up a soil sample from the Conservatory Garden with a large mortar and pestle. She then used a 3.5-cubic-centimeter soil scoop to gently add a bit of the earth to a crucible before placing it into a kiln to burn off the organic matter. “We haven’t looked at this area for a little while,” she said.

Ms. Nelson is, quite simply, the diagnostician for every aspect of Central Park’s natural environment. She tests the soils to see if there is too much nitrogen here, too little potassium there, and also monitors the park’s bodies of water. Her intimate knowledge of the park’s 843 acres — whether there has been an outbreak of curly-leaf pondweed on the Harlem Meer, for instance, or a brown patch of grass at the Sheep Meadow — helps landscapers decide what steps to take to maintain their assigned zones  .  .  .  .

“The conservancy’s maintenance of the park is so much more than mowing and raking,” said Douglas Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that manages the park for New York City. “To do it right means knowing the park at a very fundamental level.”

Much the way a sculptor uses a block of marble, the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux carved groves and meadows, ponds and waterfalls, onto the surface that is Central Park. The conservancy, similarly, employs a range of tools to make those landscapes resplendent. While fertilizers are applied judiciously, the park’s landscapers in recent years have turned to more natural remedies.

One of the most widely used is Ms. Nelson’s “compost tea,” a rich concoction made by steeping composted leaves and wood chips drawn from “the Mount,” the park’s giant compost heap near Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street, in a 100-gallon container. “We add starches and sugars — I don’t want to give away the recipe — and heat it,” she said. “We brew it like a big, stinking pot of tea.”

The liquid is then diluted with 400 gallons of water and sprayed on the seven major lawns twice a year, as well as on flower gardens and newly planted trees.

On a recent day, wisps of steam rose from the top of the compost pile. Ms. Nelson is responsible for ensuring its health, too, and frequently sticks a thermometer, attached to a long pole, into its belly. “When it reaches 120 to 130 degrees, we need to turn it over,” she said.

Ms. Nelson, who holds a degree in wildlife and fisheries conservation from Louisiana State University, has run the park’s soil lab for five years. Hydrating herself with an occasional sip of water from a beaker, she moves soil samples through a process called segmented flow analysis, in which the respective amounts of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous are determined.

“We’re looking for the levels of nutrients,” she said. “Our ideal range for phosphate is 40 to 60.”

She also keeps tabs on the park’s wildlife, trying, when it is possible, to fight nature with nature. In the summer, to combat aphid infestations along the park’s shorelines, she releases ladybugs purchased in gallon containers. The ladybugs eat the aphids, sap-sucking insects that are the bane of gardeners.

“It’s very effective,” Ms. Nelson said. “You see thousands and thousands of ladybugs flying away and covering your hands. It’s really fun.”

More challenging is the algae that can appear on the park’s half-dozen lakes and ponds, all of which are man-made. While the park’s landscapers avoid spreading fertilizer near shorelines, the water runoff from streets and sidewalks can overload lakes with nitrogen and phosphorous during heavy rains, leading to blooms of algae.

Two to three times a week, from March to September, Ms. Nelson tests the water in places like Turtle Pond, the Lake and Harlem Meer, measuring temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen levels.

The Harlem Meer, in particular, has struggled with filamentous algae, which resembles a green wooly mat and competes with plants for nutrients. Ms. Nelson periodically dispatches an algae harvester on the Meer. A small barge with pontoons, the harvester uses a conveyor belt to scoop up the algae. Once the algae was tamed, however, curly-leaf pondweed, an invasive perennial, moved in. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” Ms. Nelson said.

At Turtle Pond, she has gone out in waders to rake filamentous algae by hand. The Lake, at 72nd Street, has its own troubles, with an excess of blue-green algae. Still, Ms. Nelson is against treating the park’s bodies of water with chemicals. “Absolutely not,” she said. For now, she added, aerating lakes and ponds with sprinklers is the safest way to restore oxygen and increase the population of largemouth bass, yellow perch, catfish and sunfish.

Ms. Nelson’s detailed understanding of the park’s ecology can sometimes be burdensome. On weekends she likes to visit the park with friends: a favorite picnic spot is the Great Hill, near 106th Street on the west side. But downshifting to a more leisurely mode is not easy.

“If I see phragmites in a water body, or people feeding bread to ducks and geese, I think, ‘Oh, I should do something about that on Monday,’ ” she said. When ducks rely on humans for food, especially if it is non-nutritious bread, they can develop a disease called angel wing, she explained, and eventually lose their ability to fly.

“One of my friends says it’s like walking with an off-duty police officer,” she said. “I can’t stop looking.”’

via In a Central Park Laboratory, Providing the Diagnosis for an 843-Acre Patient – NYTimes.com.

great horned owl chicks hatch in golden gate park

Golden Gate Park Owl Chick

A great horned owl and owl chick were spotted in a nest across the street from the bison paddock in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Sunday. Richmond District resident David Cruz kept an eye on a pair of owls that hunt near the casting pools and snapped some pictures Sunday of the mother and one of two chicks that hatched in the last few weeks.

via Great horned owl chicks hatch in Golden Gate Park | SFGate Blog | an SFGate.com blog.

As Crime Falls, Central Park’s Night Use Grows

Here’s an excerpt from a recent article in the New York Times about increased use of Central Park at night.  Who uses Golden Gate Park at night, I wonder?

“For as long as most New Yorkers can remember, the rules have been clear:  Enjoy Central Park by day.  Keep out at night.

Someone, however, forgot to tell Fleur Bailey, a petite Wall Street trader who was walking her two Dalmatians in the park after 10 the other night.

“I can’t remember the last time I came across something that made me uncomfortable,” said Ms. Bailey, who lives on the Upper West Side and takes her dogs into the park as late as midnight. “Some people say, ‘You walk your dogs where at night?’ But I tell them that it’s perfectly fine.”

And she is hardly alone. On any given evening, the park now hums with life well into the night. Couples stroll under pools of lamplight, while the park drive pulses with the footfalls of runners, the whir of cyclists and the desultory clop of carriage horses. Men and women jog happily around the reservoir.

“It’s boringly safe,” said Christopher Moloney, 34, who cuts through the park at night, usually around 9, to get from his job in the Time Warner Center to his home on East 70th Street. “I’ve walked through the park at 3 in the morning, and there are always a couple of people here and there”  .  .  .

Those who use the park at night tend to have their own set of safety rules. A few nights a week, Pernilla Blomgren, 29, a consultant for the Swedish Trade Council, runs between 9 and 10 p.m. She usually heads for the path around the reservoir, where Victorian-style lampposts give ample light. She enters at Fifth Avenue and 90th Street, where joggers stretch out, and eschews an iPod. “I feel like you should have your senses clear so you can register what’s happening around you,” said Ms. Blomgren, who moved from Chicago and said she was unfamiliar with the Central Park jogger case.  .  .  .

Still, she said, but for the fact that she has to wake up early for work, she would run even later. “I’ve never seen anything bad happen,” she said. “It feels like the streets might be more dangerous than the park.”

The park conservancy’s own surveys show a marked rise in the proportion of women and older New Yorkers using the park, regardless of the hour. From the early 1980s to today, the percentage of adult parkgoers over age 50 climbed to 40 percent, from 12. Women’s presence in the park rose to 52 percent, from 32.

In a major study of Central Park usage released this year, nearly 80 percent of the visitors who were interviewed reported that there was no part of the park they avoided for safety reasons. Only 3.4 percent cited “safety concerns” as a major issue.

Park use has tripled since the early 1980s, when the conservancy began caring for the park and started a successful fund-raising effort. The private money it raises has helped cover the cost of meticulous restoration work across the park’s 843 acres. “A lot of people take the park for granted, but 25 years ago, the lights were broken, the benches were broken,” Douglas Blonsky, the conservancy’s president, said.

Over all, the city’s 1,700 parks have grown safer, like the city as a whole. New Yorkers for Parks, an advocacy group, reported in 2008 that half of the city’s 20 largest parks had five or fewer major felonies in 18 months.

Some people who frequent the park after sundown say they often have to reassure worried, often older, relatives. Others just tell fibs. Martin Blumberg, a 25-year-old theater director who lives on the Upper East Side, runs five nights a week around the six-mile park drive, usually no later than 10. But he tells his mother that he runs before dark. “She’s a worrywart,” he said.

Mr. Blumberg prefers the park at night, when it is cooler in the summer and less congested in the winter. “It’s never really desolate,” he said. “Every 100 feet, I see other runners.”

Some veteran parkgoers, like Dianne Montague, say that their fear of Central Park after dark had become so ingrained over the years that changing their perception was a slow process. Mrs. Montague, a native New Yorker who lives on 86th Street and Madison Avenue, walks her four dogs (boxer, pug, beagle and poodle) every night there. As the years have passed, she has ventured into the park later and later. These days, a final pit stop at 11:30 is not unusual.

“I’m a little more cautious than my children, because they grew up in a safer New York,” said Mrs. Montague, who rescues dogs and teaches horseback riding to people with disabilities. “I’m old-school. It took me a while to realize that the park is safe.”

via As Crime Falls, Central Park’s Night Use Grows – NYTimes.com.

warren hellman meadow: renaming after banjo pickin’ billionaire

Warren Hellman opens Hardly Strictly Bluegrass with 13-year old Ruby Jane, 2008 (photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle)

‘The Board of Supervisors has voted to recommend renaming Golden Gate Park’s Speedway Meadow after a billionaire financial titan.

But Warren Hellman isn’t your ordinary billionaire financial titan, and Speedway Meadow is no ordinary meadow.

The 77-year old private equity kingpin became a San Francisco institution when he started funding Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, an annual music festival in Golden Gate Park that draws up to three-quarters of a million music fans every year. Unlike other Bay Area music festivals, Hellman’s festival is completely free–paid for entirely out of his own pocket.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, who introduced the measure, said he’s doing it as a way to thank Hellman for his generosity.

“He really lived the credo he repeated often–’You give where you live,’” Elsbernd told the San Francisco Examiner. “Renaming Speedway Meadow in his honor is a very nice thing to do as a small token of our appreciation for all that he has done.”

Hellman’s civic involvement doesn’t stop with the festival. He is also the chairman of the New York Times-affiliated non-profit news organization The Bay Citizen (although he plays no editorial role there) and was one of the most prominent supporters of this November’s successful pension reform measure, Proposition C.

He was also the driving force behind the installation of the controversial underground parking garage between Golden Gate Park’s California Academy of Sciences and de Young Museum.

“I am absolutely blown away by this gesture,” Hellman said in a statement to The Bay Citizen. “Golden Gate Park is home to some of the best (and worst) moments of my life: family picnics with my wife, kids and grandkids, morning runs, over a decade of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and of course, the longest eight years of my life building the underground garage. There are no words and my fingers couldn’t pluck a tune to express my gratitude. My only hope is that others experience the joy and happiness I’ve found standing, singing, plunking and listening in this beautiful meadow.”

While Hellman is the grandson influential California banker and philanthropist Isaias Hellman, his fortune is largely self-made. He was the president of the now-defunct investment-banking firm Lehman Brothers until the early 1980s when he founded the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC.

The proposal to rename the field will have to be voted on by the Recreation and Parks Commission before becoming a reality.’

via Warren Hellman Meadow: Supes Propose Renaming Golden Gate Park Field After Banjo Pickin’ Billionaire (VIDEO).

new bison arrive at golden gate park

bison in golden gate park (photo: nbcbayareanews.com)

‘Far longer than there’s been a Golden Gate Bridge, Treasure Island or Coit Tower, there were bison roaming Golden Gate Park.

‘The first herd moved into a  pen in the park’s Music Concourse in 1891, and to its current west-end digs in 1899.

But following the deaths of two older females this year, the once-mighty herd was reduced to three females nearing the end of their lives. The future of this longtime tradition was in jeopardy.  But on Monday, a livestock truck pulled into the park, and unloaded the future of the buffalo exhibit. Seven females, all around six-months old, stepped into the bison paddock, separated by a fence from the park’s three older bison.

“Right now we’re keeping them separated from our older females,” said San Francisco Zookeeper Sarah King, “so that everybody can get accustomed to each other.”

The seven bison were purchased from a ranch in Redding. Assemblywoman Fiona Ma helped arrange funding and U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein’s husband Dick Blum chipped-in toward the nearly $7,200 price tag. He also donated $50 thousand dollars to update the bison’s crumbling paddock.

“In fact, the story goes Mr. Blum purchased a herd of bison in honor of his wife in 1984,” said San Francisco Parks and Recreation director Phil Ginsburg.

On Tuesday, the lumbering older gals were busy sizing up the new girls. The two groups of old and new will be united in a couple of months – once keepers declare them disease, and conflict-free.  The San Francisco Zoo, which cares for the herd, decided against adding males to the mix. Zookeepers say males can get a bit unruly, especially when ladies are in the picture.

 “So for the safety of the keepers and the bison, we prefer to just have the girls,” said King.

Just over a century ago, there were an estimated six-million bison roaming North America. By 1900, their numbers had been decimated – leaving only about a thousand. Though man was responsible for running them to near extinction, he’s also responsible for their rebound.

“In order to do that they actually had to crossbreed cattle with the existing bison,” said King.  “In fact, most of the bison today have cattle genes in them.”

The introduction of new blood into Golden Gate Park will insure the existence of the park’s herd.  Even in the dense urban landscape of San Francisco, a stroll in the park will wind past ten bison, gently grazing in a rolling field.’

New Bison Herd Arrives at Golden Gate Park | NBC Bay Area.