Well, no. This IS San Francisco and the home of the Maltese Falcon, but not this time.
We went to the Japanese Tea Garden to soak up a bit of Zen. Instead, the main pond had been drained for maintenance. Bummer. Still, we decided to walk around it to see what might be blooming. Then we found this:

This is not the same bird that we saw across the street at the Arboretum. I meant to take only a couple of pics, but it turned into a regular photo shoot. The birdie was working it for the camera.






I think I took about 90 pics. These were the best. I’m still in awe.
Here’s a vid that Lastech took with his new phone. The sound is awful, but I’m too impatient to edit it out for now, so hit the mute button. We’ll get better at this. We just need practice.