Elkhorn Slough

Back in June I went down south toward Monterey. I was dreaming that I'd perhaps spot a condor from Hwy 1 (there are sightings on ebird all along that area) but as it turns out during the summer, all the condors hang out inland. Even though I didn't find any condors, it was a nice drive along the rocky cliffs.

And there were plenty of other birds to spot. These black specks on the rocks turned out to be a bunch of murres and cormorants, nesting:

Murres are kind of like the penguins of the northern hemisphere. They're black and white, they swim after fish, they hold themselves upright... also, they can fly, so they'd probably win against penguins in a fight.
If you zoom in on the cormorants, you can just baaaaarely see that they have some purple and gold on their throats. That's how you know these are Brandt's cormorants and not your standard old double crested cormorants. Finally, a sea creature named after someone other than Steller!

Evidently these cormorants like to live near kelp beds... so seeing them around might mean that there's a good chance of seeing other kelp-loving things, such as floating logs:

Just kidding, those are totally sea otters.


While photographing them from some sand dunes near Elkhorn slough, we ran into a researcher who was collecting data on the otters' reactions to passing boats. Apparently there is a recommended approach distance (200 yards) but that number hasn't been actually been well-confirmed. So, whenever a boat passed, she had to record its distance from the otters (in otter-lengths) and the otters' reaction. Mostly their reaction was "continue being adorable."


We kayaked a bit and also spotted a pigeon guillemot. I didn't get a picture, but as one would expect from something with "pigeon" in the name, it had red feet and it was hanging out under a bridge that smelled like guano.

And, finally, here's a raven, familiar friend of cold, foggy lands.

Aaaaand, some rattlesnake grass.

Point Reyes. "Reyes" in Spanish means "Crazy windy," right?

(Wrote this in May... finally posted...)

Lots of wildflowers blooming at Point Reyes.

I didn't managed to photograph many of them though, because they were waving around all crazy in the wind! (Wind not pictured; effects can be estimated by the angle of the tree.)

But this little sedum was a sturdy fellow:

Supposedly, lots of migrating birds are around too. The day I went there, though, the only birds I saw were migrating backwards--blown by the 100 mph winds.

Actually, the white-crowned sparrows were huddled in the bushes, and the ravens managed to use the wind to hover close to the hillside.


Though mostly they were just lurking on the ground.

Corvids

Crows are actualy pretty common at Lake Merrit, but they're even harder to photograph than Goldeneyes. They just hate it when you look at them. Maybe they're embarassed to be such a goth symbol when they just want to frolic in the daisies.

They prefer when they can glare disdainfully at you from the safety of a tree.

I also spotted a pair of ravens up in Redwood. One of the pair took up the traditional "mock-humans-from-a-tree" post, while the other one...

...did some strange jumping jacks near a picnic table.







It hopped up and down several times, gworked, and flew away.

But the winner of "Best Recent Corvid Picture" goes to Judy, who went on location to the Grand Canyon:

I read Bernd Heinrich's Mind of a Raven... I think this one might be showing a bit of the "fuzzy head" he describes as being typical of a bird being submissive. And look, here you can even see its niticating membrane (the bluish eye) as it blinks.


Both of these behaviors (blinking and fuzzy head) at the same time, plus a sound called "knocking," might indicate a female. Hard to know for sure though without more context; I'm no expert!