Elk with a view

There are many places along the California coast where I'm just in awe of the view that the cows seem to get! Driving down CA-1 from San Francisco to Morro Bay, I'm not sure how many awesome pastures we passed right on the coast. The same is true for the tule elk in the Reserve on Tomales Point in Point Reyes National Seashore -- although, I must say that this seems much more fitting! There are of course spectacular views of both the Pacific Ocean and Tomales Bay over the whole trip out to the end of the peninsula, and about 2/3 of the way there we encountered a herd of elk that were taking in some really nice views across Tomales Bay. Well, I'm not sure if they were taking in the views -- but it was nice to try to get some of the dunes and beach behind them.



From the looks along the hike, that looks like a beach I would like to check out sometime -- nice large beach area and beautiful dunes.



The area was becoming developed though, as you can see with a bit of a house in this shot -- it's not nearly as distracting as the pickup trucks and port-a-potties I got in the backdrop of some other shots though!

Scent on the wind

A bull tule elk taking in the smells in the air -- as you may have expected, his nose took him right to a female. From our hike out the Tomales Point Trail in Point Reyes National Seashore. This is the same bull as in a previous post, who was the dominant male in the first group of elk that we found along the trail. While he was certainly a fine specimen, he did not appear to be the biggest or have the largest set of antlers out of all of the bulls we saw that day, but he must have made up for it with his fighting skills. It was interesting to see the dynamics of the herds we saw, as there was always one large male within the main harem and typically a smaller group consisting of what must have been the losing males hanging out on the outskirts. They were usually within eyesight, but never venturing close enough to warrant attention from the big guy (at least at this time of year).

While this shot is similar to the first (minus how I framed the image), what I really liked about it is how you can see how symmetric his rack really is. Definitely not something I would want to tangle with.


After sniffing the air for a while, he followed his nose right to this relaxing cow, who was not all that happy to see him and quickly got up after this shot was taken, and strolled down the hillside.

Grazing tule elk

This lovely female was a member of the first group of tule elk that we found along Tomales Point Trail in Point Reyes National Seashore. She was fairly close to the trail which allowed for some great viewing, as well as the chance for some shots of her going about her morning routine. She was quite interested in her breakfast, and really didn't pay much attention to us as she browsed. Occasionally we would shift further up the trail to get a new angle on the scene, and she would raise her head to watch us in motion, but as soon as we stopped she went back to feeding.



Since we started this hike early, there was still some fog in the air when we encountered this group on one of the higher ridgelines on the trail, and the speed at which the density changed was really something. One moment you could just make out their shapes in the grass, and then right before your eyes the details would emerge. These two shots came from one of the nicest breaks in the fog we got while watching this group, and in my haste to get off the shots with the new lighting, I nearly clipped off her ears. Fortunately, they just fit, even if I would have preferred a bit more space.

Bull tule elk along Tomales Point Trail

Hiking the full lenght of the Tomales Point Trail (listed as 4.7 miles one-way) in Point Reyes National Seashore is something that had been on our list since moving to the Bay Area. This is a beautiful trail that stretches through coastal scrub and grasslands all the way to the the tip of Tomales Point with Tomales Bay on the east side of the peninsula, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Perhaps the biggest attraction though, is that the trail runs through the Tule Elk Reserve, which hosts a reintroduced herd of tule elk, which now numbers ~440 elk. We attempted it once when we had family in town, but it was raining and fairly miserable, so after we saw a few tule elk far off the trail we decided to turn around only a few miles into it. However, two weekends ago the conditions looked great with a forecast of overcast skies and no rain, so we decided to attempt it again.



As per my usual, we arrived right around sunrise and were the first car in the parking lot, meaning we were the first feet (of the human sort) on the trail. We had to go probably around 2 miles before we saw our first elk, and unfortunately it was at the top of a ridge that just happened to have fog rolling across it. However, we kept going a bit further and made it right into the heart of a herd of ~20 animals. While the females were quite beautiful, it was really the male who kept drawing our eyes -- and the shot of him above is from when he first came over the hillside and into view.

He doesn't look quite as tough though, with his tongue sticking out!

Great weekend for wildlife

I had a fantastic weekend for experiencing and photographing wildlife. We took a hike out to the end of Tomales Point in Point Reyes National Seashore, which goes through the Tule Elk Reserve there. We must have seen at least 100 elk along the trail! Then we also took our annual trip to Ano Nuevo State Reserve to see the elephant seals and their breeding season antics. As you can see here, this image is neither an elk or seal, but it was a shot that I had already processed and was just waiting to be uploaded. So since I have a few thousand shots to go through from this weekend and haven't had the time to do so yet, this is what I've got for now.



This shot was taken in a small dog park along the Bay Trail in Marin County near Bothin Marsh on Richardson Bay. I had used up the good morning light in the marsh but decided to wander up the trail to see if there was anything else interesting around. I wasn't expecting much, but a group of these little guys were playing in the shadows of some trees that hadn't yet seen the light of morning. This gave me some nice even lighting instead of the harshness that was in the rest of the park.

Perhaps I should have been paid a sitting fee

I have never had a great blue heron be quite as cooperative as this one, which I photographed in October at Bothin Marsh along Richardson Bay after spending the sunrise at the Golden Gate Bridge. I saw this GBH and its snowy egret posse a ways off by the shore of the bay, and decided to take a stroll along a side trail in that direction to attempt a few shots before the last of the nice light faded away. Much to my surprise, he showed very little interest in me as I approached, and as I casually crept closer over a period of 20 minutes or so, he occasionally glanced in my direction but never showed any signs of interest or distress. Eventually I was able to get close enough to take this full-frame portrait of him, as well as a few from other angles with different backdrops. While it was great to get some nice poses, it was almost a little boring, as he just sat there staring off at the bay! After I fired off way too many similar shots like this one, I thanked him (as I often do for my cooperative subjects), and slowly backed my way out of the area.

The nonchalance of this heron is one advantage I find to spending some time in more urban parks. I have had many fairly close encounters in Bothin Marsh, and I think its due to the fact that what seems like thousands of people use this stretch of the Bay Trail daily, and the birds seem to get used to the commotion and could basically care less if you are there snapping away.

Broken trust and a final glance (Part 4)

(This is the fourth and final part of my Saturday morning encounter with this beautiful coyote)

After unsuccessfully finding anything to eat in the area directly ahead of me, the coyote headed down a small slope and into a brush-area. I again got to watch the entertaining hunting behavior of pouncing and shoving your snout into a burrow, but he was unsuccessful in his multiple attempts.



At this point, he was following a trail that made a big arc around where I was sitting, and while occasionally giving me a glance, he came quite close (perhaps 10-15 yards) of me. For the first time, I started to feel just a little uneasy, and I started talking to him to get his attention, saying, “Hey, we’re cool right? No need to get too much closer.” He stared at me quizzically for a while, and then went back to sniffing the ground.



He found a good scent trail and make an arc in the other direction, but one that came even closer to my position.





I loved the opportunity to take some close shots, but I was constantly rotating the camera and trying to keep my tripod and lens between me and the coyote at all times. Unfortunately, I had rotated as far as possible without having to move my feet, and when I stepped into a new position I made a loud shuffling sound and startled him. He gave me a worried glance, tucked his tail under and sprinted to a further distance. He then gave me this final glance, which I read as a look of the broken trust that we had temporarily had between us, before sniffing the air and running away.



I hung around the area for another 20 minutes or so, but he never returned.



These are the kind of experiences that make it so worth getting up well before the crack of dawn on a Saturday in order to get to the trailhead at by sunrise. It never really crossed my mind that I’d ever have a chance to spend some time with a wild coyote. You just never know what to expect on a trip to Point Reyes – which always makes it enjoyable.

Nose to the Ground (Part 3)

(This is Part 3 of my Saturday morning encounter at Point Reyes -- quick links to Part 1 and Part 2)

I enjoyed the company of the deer for a while longer, before they left for the field on the other side of the road. At this point, I considered packing up and heading to a different trailhead (and perhaps one with a bit less fog), but instead I became interested in the sparrows bouncing about and the beautiful backlit morning dew drops on the grass (subjects of a future post). After being lost in the small-scale pleasure of the dew for maybe 10-15 minutes, I looked up to find that the coyote had returned to the area, and was following the scent trail of the rodents that had pock-marked the ground with their burrows.



He was in serious tracking mode, as he rarely lifted his snout from the ground.



He gave me a few uneasy glances, but at this time, I was crouching low with my tripod working on some ground-level psuedo-macros and apparently I seemed unthreatening enough that he continued about his business of sniffing for rodents.



All the while, the fog was in constant flux going between pea-soup and just a light mist, and these shots gave me some of the best light of the morning as the sun almost made it through. As an aside, you can see in this series that it was a wet morning, as his fur looked like he had just been through a shower -- perhaps just some tall grass on the hillside. I was thankful to have a pair of gloves in my pocket, which I've come to realize is a must for morning photography in the Bay Area, almost year-round.



It was early even for the coyote, who engaged in a big yawn.



More of my encounter coming tomorrow.

Leading up to the encounter (Part 1)

(As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a great wildlife encounter on Saturday morning, and I'm planning to tell the story through a series of posts this week -- I hope you enjoy them.)

I knew I wanted to get out this Saturday morning to take advantage of the last late sunrise for a while, and since it had been a few weeks since I’d been to Point Reyes, that seemed like the place to be. You never know what to expect in this gorgeous park, and it very rarely disappoints (as long as you are open to seeing something other than what you planned). I felt like trying a new locale and after consulting one of my favorite guide books (Birding Northern California by John Kemper) and doing some searches in google and on Flickr, I settled on going all the way out to the point of Point Reyes to the Fish Docks area near Chimney Rock. My hope was to find some owls, which I did see one thanks to a very friendly visitor who was there even before I was – but the real joy of this trip was an unexpected encounter with a beautiful coyote.

My experience with coyotes is most typically seeing one out the car window as it sprints away from view. Very rarely do I ever get to watch one for more than a few moments, and even more infrequent are encounters while on foot, which has always been at quite a distance. (As an aside, one of my favorite experiences was a sunrise hike at Limantour Spit while I was serenaded with coyote howls for about 20 minutes. It's a beautiful sound, but also a tad unnerving.) My experience on this morning started as they normally do, where I saw one hunting alongside the road as I approached the trailhead parking lot. This was before the sun had come over the horizon, and in very heavy fog, so while I tried a few shots from out the window, none of them worked. However, I did get to watch the typical pouncing of their hunting behavior, and I even saw him snack on a good sized breakfast. But after he finished eating, he slipped away into the fog.

So I continued on to the parking lot, got my gear out and found a lovely mother mule deer and her youngster who had camped out near the bathrooms under a few bushes. I got to watch as they started their day with a few stretches and some grazing on the dew covered greens near the parking lot.

Mother mule deer:


Her youngster:


Grazing together:


It seemed like every individual blade of grass and small stick was covered with dew, which adds a nice sparkle to the shots.

Coyote in the dew

I took advantage of the last weekend of 7:30am sunrises for a while by waking up at 5:20 and heading out to the tip of the Point Reyes peninsula at the Chimney Rock area. The fog stayed heavy throughout the morning, which made the photography a bit more challenging than usual to get a sharp shot, but I managed to snag a few nice ones from a terrific encounter with this coyote. I'm in the process of writing up some future posts to tell the story, but I wanted to share a shot ahead of time. With the air heavy with moisture, the world was covered in dew drops, which made for a beautiful setting as the sun came up and brightened the fog.



In addition to the coyote and some deer that will play a role in the story, I saw a variety of songbirds, as well as a great horned owl (no chance of a nice image, unfortunately) and I heard the calls of some male elephant seals down below the overlook.