Elusive sparrows and shitty people

Sometimes, people really disappoint me.

I often visit Ronan Park, located right off of Lawrence Avenue at Sacramento. People bring their children there, bike and jog there, and some people go there because they are bored and do not have a pleasant life outlook. These are the people who make going to the park less enjoyable.

Often, fishermen congregate on the southeast corner of the park. They drink beer and throw the cans over their shoulder, sometimes leaving dozens of cans sitting in the grass. Lots of unruly young men hang out, talk loudly and drink more beer as well. Today, about five of these fellows were chilling on the other side of the river from me. I rolled my eyes at their loud voices and macho posturing, but became angry when I heard the loud splash and realized that they'd just thrown a Budweiser box full of empty bottles into the water. The box floated southwards, the bottles following it, the red label across the top of each bottle visible through my binoculars.

I contemplated yelling at them. I envisioned going over to their side and delivering a harsher treatment than shouting. I didn't do either; instead, I just talked to myself (inwardly, of course!) "You can't change people's behavior; there's nothing you can do about it; it's better than them actually hurting a heron or mallard; just calm down....etc."

Even though I can not do anything about such ignorant, lame, uncreative, hateful, boring/bored people, they still make me angry. One thing I could do is clean up in the park; I should see if there is a group who already does that. It sickens me to think about cleaning up after such jerks, but doing so would at least improve the atmosphere for the birds and other wildlife there.

* * *

On the upside, many ruby-crowned kinglets and white-throated sparrows treated me to their presence. It's very hard to photograph kinglets, so I only tried once, to no success, and just delighted in watching the little birds flit from tree branch, to leaf, to fence and back and forth. I felt as though I should have been able to get a nice photo of one of the sparrows, but they kept alluding me, too. Every time I thought I'd captured it, the photo came out poorly, although these two amused me:



Here, the bird stealthily avoids me.



Here, the bird mocks me by allowing an almost-decent--but not quite--photo of it.

This robin and squirrel posed for me at least:





Other birds seen included a Northern Flicker, Field and Song Sparrows, Cardinals, Grackles, tons of Robins, Canada geese, Mallards, a lone Hermit Thrush and a confused male House Sparrow.

The winds were very brisk and I soon became chilled and headed home....