On a sunny morning in San Francisco, Pamelia and I trekked to the California Academy of Sciences, a newly redesigned science and natural history museum in Golden Gate Park. The building itself is beautiful and airy. It includes an aquarium and a dome-enclosed, muliti-level rainforest habitat in which birds and butterflies flutter about freely. A few more shots from the day:
The academy's two-and-a-half-acre living roof is growing 73 species of native plants in a six-inch layer of soil. The roof insulates the building well in winter in summer, reduces rain runoff and attracts butterflies and birds.
The most spectacular bird flying around the academy's rainforest exhibit was the paradise tanager, also known in Spanish as siete colores, or seven colors. The bird's wings are scarlet and yellow, adding to the black, green and three shades of blue elsewhere on him.
The academy's aquarium included these stinging sea nettles, which are carnivorous.
This graph shows the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is causing climate change. And no, that is not a hoax.
We're off now to the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, down toward San Jose. The San Francisco Bay is an immensely important water resource for migrating birds, and we're hoping to see plenty.