Overcast snowy plover, Point Reyes National Seashore

In keeping with the theme of my previous two posts, here is another shot pulled from the archives of an awesome trip I took to Point Reyes National Seashore in February of last year. This series of images illustrates part of why I love Point Reyes so much -- because I could start out my day being surrounded by a herd of tule elk, then have time to cruise through the park to see a kestrel, a skunk, and a bobcat along the roads, before ending up on Limantour Spit to photograph shorebirds including sanderlings and western snowy plovers like this one. While all of these shots lacked the magic light of the golden hour, Point Reyes taught me to truly appreciate overcast skies for wildlife photography. If the marine layer fog hadn't kept the sky covered throughout the morning, I would have been ready to leave the park after seeing the elk and losing the nice light to ugly blue skies. Instead, this wonderful diffuse light stayed around all morning, and I was able to keep shooting all the way up until it was time to head home in time to have lunch with my wife.

View more photos of these adorable shorebirds in my Plovers Gallery.

Little snowy plover, Point Reyes National Seashore

Just a quick post of this cute little snowy plover sitting in the sands of Limantour Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore. This shot is from an awesome hike I took along the beach last November, when I was able to spend time with a group of western snowy plovers, a different group of semipalmated plovers, and huge flocks of mixed sandpipers.

Western snowy plover, Point Reyes National Seashore

Snowy plovers are one of my favorite subjects to photograph, and Limantour Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore is a great place to find them. I took this series of images under a heavily overcast sky, but by dialing in some extra exposure, it almost looks like they were in a snowy landscape.



I like the attitude this bird is showing in this shot, with that foot raised while its calling out. I also thought that the straight on view is an interesting way to see them.



The next two shots unfortunately didn't come out sharp, but I thought the captured behavior was interesting enough to share. In this shot it's preparing for a strike at an unseen prey item.



And in this frame, it lunged through my plane of focus (you can see the tail feathers are sharp) to catch a small critter for lunch.

Stand up and celebrate -- Congrats Giants!!

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!

On one toothpick

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.

Western snowy plover

A western snowy plover in breeding plumage along the beach at Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore.

Snowy plovers on the beach

If you walk far enough down Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore you're very likely to encounter these threatened shorebirds. My walk on this day in March was no exception, and I had a chance to snap off a few shots as they scurried down the beach.



I like the pose and the breeding plumage of the plover on the left in this frame, but unfortunately, they only stayed in this position for a few moments, and I wasn't able to get a shot without that distracting stick in it.