Driving around the outer peninsula of Point Reyes National Seashore at this time of year is great for finding raptors. Its easy to spot a variety of birds perched along the fencing that runs along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, as they scan the agricultural fields for a meal. I snapped off a few shots of this bird from the car while driving out towards the lighthouse area, and I saw it still there on my way back as well. I also saw what looked like a Cooper's hawk and a handful of kestrels, but they were opposed to having their picture taken.
A western willet scanning the mudflats at low tide for a meal. This is not the usual way I display shorebirds, but there's something that really pulls me into this particular straight-on view. I think its the eyes, and how they are unexpectedly focused forward, which is not how we usually see birds. From this perspective, the placement of the eyes makes the willet seem much more predatory than when its viewed in profile. Taken in Pillar Point Harbor during a negative low tide, with plenty of mudflat exposed.
Our trip to Lake Tahoe in October wasn't all bears and salmon, as we took a drive around the lake on Sunday afternoon. It was unfortunately a rainy day, but we did get periods of time without precipitation, which provided a chance to shoot some landscapes with a wonderfully dramatic sky. This shot is from the Sand Harbor area on the Nevada side of the lake during a mostly dry walk along the shore.
Since the sky had such wonderful color but was rather bright, I thought this would be a good chance to take some bracketed sets and try my hand at HDR for the first time. This is a combination of 3 frames, each one stop apart. I'm not sure that this was the most ideal situation for requiring a blended exposure, but compared to what I was able to do in a single frame in Lightroom it did seem to help a bit. I was able to retain more of the color in the sky, while still keeping the rocks evenly lit in the foreground. This is definitely something I need some work with, but it was a fun exercise all the same.
I've included a "making of" shot, courtesty of my lovely wife, since she takes such great pictures of me taking pictures. I had to laugh when I saw this one too, because I know she was chuckling at me during this shot since I had just explained how I would need to go to the furthest rock I could reach in order to get just the right composition. Of course, when I compare the results of my HDR efforts to what came out of my wife's point and shoot in auto mode, perhaps it wasn't worth the trouble!
While reading online about the Kokanee salmon run in Taylor Creek off of Lake Tahoe before our trip, I learned that bears in the area have a distinct taste for trout. In fact, one report said that its not uncommon for bears to catch trout in the creeks, but it was only recently (within the past few years) that select bears started capitilizing on the salmon run. We witnessed this preference first hand with the mother bear that we watched fishing in the creek.
Just before catching this fish, she had a nice sized salmon in her jaws, and she had already eaten many by this point. However, she clearly got excited when she saw the trout and she dropped the salmon without eating it and lunged for this beautiful fish.
She had eaten most of the salmon on the rocks right in the stream, however, with this special prize it appeared that she didn't want to risk losing it back into the water and she quickly carried it up onto the bank before starting to eat. Her cub noticed what she was up to, and he definitely wanted in!
Surprisingly, she was unwilling to share with the cub (at least at the current location) and ripped the fish out of its grasp while it tried desparately to hang on to the tasty meal, and she then carried it further away.
This time she went back up the hillside and out of view of the creek. The cub definitely stayed right behind while she went -- likely hoping for some scraps, and perhaps she decided to share once she was truly away from the chance of losing it back to the creek.
Here's a movie clip taken by my wife of the bear's decision to not eat the trout in the stream. You can see her hesitate at the rock where she was eating salmon, and when the trout really starts moving and she decides to take it to the shore.
It's time to stand up and celebrate -- congrats to the 2010 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants!! This was an awesome season filled with many highs and many lows that ended with a dominant postseason run, capped off tonight with the first championship since the franchise moved to San Francisco! Congrats Giants!!!
On a photography note, these "celebrating" snowy plover shots were taken along Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore in September. I spent a lot of time laying in the sand with half a dozen plovers, just waiting for them to do something interesting. I'd often see them stretch there wings from the corner of my eye, but it seemed hopeless to actually have the active one in front of my glass at the time. But my patience paid off, and I lucked out with two frames of this stretch. I like the tiptoed stance in the top shot, and the details in the wings in the bottom, and both seem to give off a feeling of happiness and celebration, so I was hanging on to them in my queue waiting for this moment to post them to celebrate the Giants winning the Series! Go Giants!
As with every Monday morning, it sure would have felt nice to hit that snooze button one more time. In honor of that feeling, here's a shot of a few sanderlings napping along Limantour Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore. This is a start of a good week though, with 3 chances for the Giants to win the World Series beginning with Lincecum on the mound tonight!
And of course we have an election this week as well. For those of you in California, don't forget to vote Yes on 21 to fund our State Parks and keep these awesome wild areas safe and open to the public! More information can be found at this link.
A female black bear with a freshly caught male Kokanee salmon in Taylor Creek near Lake Tahoe. While this shot is an ok profile of the bear, I really loved how the salmon turned out. You can see what a beautiful fish they are when in the breeding form.
And a huge congrats to the Giants for their game 1 victory last night over Cliff Lee and the Rangers. I thought they would pull out a win against him, but not quite in that high-scoring fashion! Go Giants!
A black bear cub finishing up the last scraps of a Kokanee salmon on a log alongside of Taylor Creek. This was one of the few frames where I was able to get some of the autumn color behind the bears as well.
I have a bunch more bear images sitting in the queue, but I thought I'd go with something of a more typical variety for my blog this Monday morning to mix things up a bit. Here's a lovely black-necked stilt walking through the shallows of Shollenberger Park in Petaluma. I just love to see these birds, and I think they are especially striking in photographs with their starkly contrasting plumage. With the very shallow water along the edges of the pond, this frame really shows off the wonderfully long legs of this species. In fact, they have the second longest legs of any species relative to their body size, with only the flamingo being longer.
This cute little black bear cub belongs to the mother bear from my previous posts. It was really fun to watch him bound around the creek side, and he even caught a few salmon for himself. In this shot he's taking a quick break from chasing the fish to see what was happening upstream of the salmon fence.
A black bear finishing up a freshly caught Kokanee salmon. Early on in the encounter, she must have been fairly hungry since she ate just about every part of the fish but the tail. But by the end of her visit to the creek, she was being much more selective about the parts of the fish she wanted to consume.
You might have noticed the metal fence behind her, which crossed the length of the stream. This was put in place by the Department of Fish & Game to keep most of the salmon in the lower part of the stream in order to facilitate the collection of eggs for hatchery use. This created quite a concentration of salmon right at the gate, and the local bears definitely figured that out!
Here's a "making of" shot for this image sequence, courtesy of my wife. We were up on a stream bank (along with many other people watching the bear) and were remarkably close. In any other situation it would have felt too close, however, it was clear from the relaxed behavior of this bear that she was only interested in the fish, and she barely paid attention to the throngs of people watching along the shore.
And since this shot clearly shows my baseball allegiance, I'll sneak in a "Let's Go Giants!!" -- we're up 2-1 in the NLCS!
Its Friday morning, which means the weekend is nearly here and its almost time to relax. Lying out in the autumn sunshine like this Olympic marmot certainly sounds nice. Here's to hoping that you have an enjoyable and relaxing weekend! Taken in the Obstruction Pass area of Olympic National Park in September.
A few weeks ago I posted a few shots from the archives of a great blue heron at Rodeo Lagoon in the act of striking at prey below the water surface. However, I didn't include any shots of the bird with its prize. I've remarked before at how small the fish were that it was catching, and I stand by that with this picture as evidence. It seems like it would take a lot of these tiny fish to satiate a bird of this size. I've got to give it credit though, it was remarkably adept at catching such small prey.
A western snowy plover (Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus) standing around on Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore. At this point in time it had popped up out of one footprint in the sand to have a look around before plopping down into a different one.
The summit of Mount Olympus as seen from the Obstruction Point area in Olympic National Park. When starting out on the hike I figured I would want a more wide-angle lens, however, I quickly changed my mind when I realized how small these glorious peaks would be in the frame. Instead, I slapped on my wildlife lens (Tamron 200-500 zoom) and felt that the way I was seeing the sights along the trail was much better represented by the tighter composition of 200mm. It also was nice to be ready when we saw an Olympic marmot along the trail.
A bull tule elk grazing along Tomales Point in Point Reyes National Seashore in August of this year. This area was one of the best for seeing them along the trail, since I could get a nice background of both Tomales Bay and the hills on the other side.
A sanderling (Calidris alba) in a high-contrast plumage phase (probably a molting juvenile) having a stretch and a bow. And really, with how much it stands out from the others who can blame it for showing off a little. Taken along Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore.
