Flutterby™! : Wildlife

I guess I've been wrong all of these years, when I've said I was biking up Rocky Ridge, I was actually biking up the Rock Spring-Lagunitas trail. I don't feel too bad about it, because as bad as Rocky Ridge is, the Rock Spring trail is a steeper ascent to that first 1,400 feet. Today I was feeling like a bit of adventure, so when I saw that right turn that I'd pedaled passed numerous times (and hiked on before), I took it, and went back down Rocky Ridge to the earth dam that separates Bon Tempe Lake from Alpine Lake. As I pedaled across the dam, I looked down and saw a flash of white head. My first thought was "bald eagle", but as I looked further from above I realized that that was the scrawniest ugliest bald eagle I'd ever seen. So I pedaled across and snuck up on the creature from below. You'll have to zoom the image, and there's another one of the bird at rest. Time to go hit the Sibley book and figure out what it was I saw, 'cause much of what I saw as scrawny from above was just coloration interpreted in the context of an eagle, there was definitely a lot of bird there.

But in the process of chasing him down, there were a few other treats:

It's been a really wildlife rich summer; the other day pedaling back over the Terra Linda-Sleepy Hollow divide from Phil's house I saw a coyote up close, and the deer are out in daylight to the point of infestation.