Coit Tower's wild parrots

Of all the places I expect for a flock of wild parrots to be, San Francisco’s Coit Tower would be one of the last places. After a stunning view of the city, Alcatraz, the bridges, and the bay, I came down from the top and was immediately SCREAMED at from in the trees. I almost [wet] my pants. The sound was familiar but completely out-of-place. It might as well have been Howler Monkeys in Africa, it was so wrong. I looked up for about 5 minutes and saw nothing, moved a foot, and was again greeted with the loudest and most bizarre sound I’ve ever heard in San Francisco. I got the Panasonic TZ4 out to record video and sound but the damned source turned silent again. Almost as if it was watching me and smart enough to know what I was doing.

That annoyed me because no ANIMAL is supposed to be able to out-think ME: “Top-Of-The-Food-Chain Lenny”!!!! Turns out that the source was quite visible all the time but I_ couldn’t see it: a very gnarly, old, smartass parrot! Some local guy passing by said, ‘the parrots are always here’, as if it was common knowledge. Hell, maybe it IS common knowledge – for _locals. But nature-loving people like me know that parrots are NOT beach-loving, cold weather enjoying, California West Coast natives! Doing the ‘passive watcher thingie’ (looking in a direction but not focusing on anything and waiting for movement to grab your attention and focus), I saw the distinctive flight and profile. Sure enough, I looked at the right spot and a parrot congratulated me with another lusty scream. A parrot????

A little research and it turns out that an entire flock of them suddenly turned up in this one spot years ago. If anyone knows why, they aren’t tellin’ but it’s the most disorienting thing I witnessed in the bay area. The suckers know who’s a sucker and scream at them without moving, making it all but impossible to find the source for most people and completely impossible for a colourblind guy like me. They are all but invisible to me unless they move. Of course, the camera catches them and the computer can find their profiles. But out there in the freakin’ west coast FOG, these are the last guesses I would have come up with. (Well, maybe pterodactyls would be last but parrots would be a strong second-to-last).

The parrots are not friendly, it seems. Once I knew they were there and could spot them, I called to them and they looked and called back but wouldn’t budge from a good ways away. All appear to be the same type/species and some are obviously paired as mating couples. They don’t screech; only the jerks messing with tourists do that. They also don’t ‘spook’. I could have thrown a rock at one and it would have flown off and none but his partner would have followed. But them a few of them take wing together, it’s hella cool! Parrots don’t look like any other bird in flight. (Well, maybe toucans but I haven’t seen a toucan flying except on cereal commercials in the US and those were cartoons).

My trip to the top of the Coit Tower was extremely nice. But discovering the flock of parrots and having the Nikon D80 with the 70-300mm lens (shameless disclosure for the Nikon D80 group, but you knew that already, right?) ready made that stop very, very special. :-)

Just so I get accepted in the right places…
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Nikon D80
Nikkor 70-300mm lens
Focal length: 200mm
F/stop: 5.6
Exposure time: 1/100 second
Metering mode: pattern
Date/time: 2/27/09 @ 1:12pm
Still right-handed
Still using Corel PaintShop Pro XI for enlarging (but I used it for a lot more on this shot so bite me)
Still using dominant right eye but keeping left eye open is easy now
Grid was displayed in the viewfinder but I didn’t use it on a bird
ISO: 100
Mode: full manual
Wind: calm
Breakfast: two Mandarin oranges, two AM/PM spicy hotdogs, and a caffeine-free Pepsi
Coke sucks
Caffeine is OK but I can’t sleep if I drink it
Next to Bacardi 151 rum & Pepsi, top shelf Long Island Ice Teas are the best
Spicy fries rock
Typed using a very dirty generic keyboard into an OLD Compaq Presario computer that I customized with dual DVD burners and 2GB of RAM.
Back up device: Buffalo 1TB desktop external hard drive using Firewire
Camera bag: a nice but cheap Targus
Tripod: unused but also a Targus.
Lighting: 2 100watt incandescent bulbs on a self-installed dimmer, utilizing about 60 watts
Hair: precious little