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!

Elephant seal flippers

While on the beach with these guys, I spent a fair amount of time at the longest range of my zoom trying to work for some intimate portraits. Mostly I was focused on the faces of the old males and their wonderful big nose and textured chest shields. However, their flippers have always intrigued me as well.



They have five fingers within their flipper and each ends in a tiny little "flipper-nail" (for lack of a better term). While at first glance it seems to beg the question of why they would still evolutionarily need nails at the end, it does appear that they are good for scratching an itch upon occasion (although, one would think there might be a better reason as well).



It's really interesting to watch them use their flipper, as you can see that their bone structure really must be similar to ours, where there are multiple knuckles in their "fingers".

Relaxing on the beach

A quick post for this shot of another smaller male elephant seal taking a break on the much quieter Cove Beach of Ano Nuevo State Reserve. This beach is outside of the official wildlife protection area, meaning that for the seals its much quieter since there are only a few of them, and for the humans, it means that you can go to this beach without a guide. On the times we've gone in the past two years, there have been a handful of males, most of them smaller than the beachmasters ruling the harems in the official area, that appear to be happy to have a quiet beach to themselves.