Tag: berkeley scenes

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Heron

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Yesterday’s top Berkeley bird: This great blue heron, which was hunting in the meadow near the off-leash dog area in Chavez Park near the Marina. The place is crawling with ground squirrels, and you see herons and egrets stalking them — or staking out their burrows, anyway — fairly frequently. Other people in the park have told me they’ve seen a heron catch a squirrel — spear it, then swallow it whole. That’s what this one did as we passed yesterday, though I didn’t actually see the spearing part. It tossed its catch into the air and caught it, then took several minutes to work it down. I don’t think it was keen on flying while it was trying to swallow such a big lump of protein, and I was able to approach to about 30 feet with my non-telephoto-equipped digital camera for this shot.

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Berkeleyana: The Kenney Cottage

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Last Sunday, we walked a little farther down University Avenue than usual (in search of a mailbox to drop a Netflix disc into; seems like we have many fewer mailboxes than in olden times, and the ones that have survived here are covered with grafitti and in general so trashy-looking that make you wonder whether they’re in use anymore). I’ve probably been by this spot at least 100 times in the last five years, and never noticed this building. The banner is a plea from the Berkeley Archtectural Heritage Association for someone to give this house a home. As my dad would say, all it needs is a little TLC. The association had the structure, which apparently dates back to the 1880s and is of a unique (and patented) portable design, moved to this lot in 2004 from a spot about five blocks up University; prior to that, it had been a further five blocks east and south. Now, nature and the neighborhood are having their way with the place.

Read more about the house on the BAHA site (which includes some cool pictures of the cottage’s earlier moves and what the place looked like when it was first planted on this lot):

Berkeley Observed: Kenney cottage serves as rare example of early prefabricated architecture

Kenney cottage needs a home!

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Usurpations and Abuses

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Corner of Vine and Walnut (in front of the Friends meetinghouse, across the street from a Mormon church, diagonally across from the being-refurbished original location of Peet’s Coffee–home of Berkeley’s one true religion).  

The nailed-up candy heart got our attention first. Then the “long train of usurpations and abuses” flyer.