The sounds of the northern elephant seal, Año Nuevo State Reserve

One of the most fun parts of watching the northern elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Reserve is when a large bull decides to make his presence known on the beach. We stopped by this bull around sunset, since he was really going at it. In addition to pulling up into the posture that they use for fighting -- they get into some serious fights over dominance by pulling up like this and swinging their necks at each other, then when they make contact, they bite and tear with those big teeth -- they make a unique vocalization that can be heard from quite a distance away. It's sort of like a burping/gurgling sound, but thanks to my wife I don't have to try to describe it better, since she took a video clip while we were on the beach.




As you saw in the video, once they are done displaying, they'll flop back to the ground and look rather peaceful again. This makes for some interesting poses as they come back towards the sand, and I think they look kind of cute with that droopy face.

Resting beauty, Año Nuevo State Reserve

Two shots of a male northern elephant seal resting on the beach at sunset in Año Nuevo State Reserve. Its fun to watch them display and make their very unique vocalizations, but most of the time they are just relaxing in the sand.

Here come the elephant seals, Año Nuevo State Reserve

Last weekend was our annual trip to Año Nuevo State Reserve to see the northern elephant seals. We had a terrific trip, and I came home with some images that I'm pretty excited about. Thus, there will likely be a lot of big marine mammals on the blog this week. I'm just so fascinated by these awesome creatures!



Here are two shots to get things started while I work my way through the pile. This is a bull on Loser's Beach making his presence known around sunset. I like the first image slightly more since the eye is a bit more visible, but the second one shows him stretched a bit taller with the nose a tad more prominent (I know, pretty subtle differences). This guy was no where near the largest of the bulls we saw, but he was the most photogenic.



And since making-of images are always fun, here's a shot taken by my wife of me behind the lens photographing this male. The rule at the reserve is to stay at least 25 feet away from the seals at all times, but I'm not sure that I would ever want to get that close!

Great Blue Heron at Sunset

This great blue heron was hunting out on the mudflats of Pillar Point Harbor last November.

Three sanderlings?

When I was flipping through the files I had already processed from this trip to pick one to upload for today, something new caught my eye in this frame. The tail feathers off to the side of the left-most sanderling actually belong to a second bird behind it. Other than a slight tilt in angle towards me, the front bird could have completely blocked out the back bird. Now I'll have to look through my archives again to see if I have a frame where this is the case. This shot is from an awesome morning spent at Limantour Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore with a huge flock of sandpipers.

I also wanted to mention that Jim Goldstein posted the results for his annual blog project of 2010 Favorites. Over 160 of his readers submitted their personal favorite images of the past year (myself included) and he put together a list with a link to each one. If you have some time and want to see some great images, its definitely worth checking them out!