Downtown San Francisco - Sealions and Parrots

Its the skyscrapers that make it. As you get off the little metro trains and ascend the escalators you finally arrive in downtown San Francisco. Feeling dwarfed by the looming buildings you realise you really are in an amazing city. This is San Francisco, a place with everything you can dream of.
There's even nature here.

Pier 39
The main wildlife feature of the city of San Francisco is Pier 39. From downtown, moving onto the waterfront, there is a jetty which was originally built for boaters, but was soon hijacked by a herd of CALIFORNIAN SEALIONS. As most people don't want to argue with a one ton, bad-tempered sea beast they were welcome to it. So today a herd of SEALIONS bask within view of Alcatraz whilst tourists take photos of them from nearby human inhabited piers. Sealions are charismatic animals, and play up to the tourists, and are greatly entertaining. They are very much a tourist attraction of the city, in a very touristy area, helping to sell t-shirts and mugs with their image printed on them.
Around the bay area there were various birds present, with DOUBLE CRESTED CORMORANTS, roosting, as cormorants do, with outspread wings just out of human reach. CALIFORNIAN GULLS San Francisco's version of our herring gulls were as common as these birds usually are. And offshore BROWN PELICANS were common, constantly flying back and forth.

 

 

The urban setting of San Francisco is home to some very familiar species. Both HOUSE SPARROWS and STARLINGS have been introduced from the UK, by homesick settlers, and have now increased to plague numbers. Quite surprising considering how rare they've become back here in Blighty. Like our blackbirds, feeding on crumbs from the many cupcakes chomped by humans at the water side cafes, were BREWER'S BLACKBIRDS.

 

 

Perhaps the most exotic resident of downtown San Francisco are the CHERRY-HEADED CONURES. In some urban trees as twilight falls their loud chatter was quite a feature - wow, there are parrots here. Originally from Ecuador, they are so famous there is actually a feature film made about them (although I haven't seen it yet). They are as very much a feature of the city as any historical building, and are worth looking out for.

Ok, so you wouldn't come to San Francisco just to see wildlife. But the fact that the city has so much to offer makes it worth a visit. And just seeing nature somehow survive in this concrete jungle is truly inspiring.