Category Archives: Photographs: Wildlife

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelican Flock, Waddell Creek Beach

June 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of pelicans turns toward Waddell Creek Beach along the Pacific coast of California.

This group was photographed a few seconds before I photographed the single overhead pelican that I posted a couple of days ago. Here the flock had turned back towards the land in preparation for rising to the edge of a much higher bluff just to the north.

Since I so recently described the circumstances of this shoot, I’ll keep this text short!

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelican Against Blue Sky

June 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A low flying pelican passes overhead against clearing coastal fog and blue sky.

This pelican was part of a very large group that flew directly over my position along the Pacific Ocean coast north of Santa Cruz, California. One of the main tricks to photographing these wonderful bird – though not the only trick – is figuring out where to photograph them. They are very common along the coastline of “my” part of California, the area from just north of San Francisco south to the Big Sur area below Monterey and Carmel. But in many places you’ll watch them fly past too far out over the water, or below you such that they don’t make easy photographic targets. But by spending a bit of time along the coast, I’ve begun to understand their patterns a bit, and I now know a few places where I’m fairly likely to find them flying very close or even directly overhead.

We had spotted this group along the top of a bluff where they often fly by as they coast along on the updrafts from the onshore winds. (One thing I’ve never been able to figure out is that the almost always are flying from south to north. Are they taking the train back south so that they can repeat the trip? Do they just keep going? Do they only make on flight? It is a mystery to me!) We had just missed photographing this large flock as they came by, but I had a hunch that they might come down close to the water at a location just north where the road drops to a beach where a creek enters the ocean. So we headed there, parked the car, and a few minutes later we saw the flock appear around the cliffs to the south and descend toward the beach. As they came to our position they began to turn inland and climb towards the next bluff, and as this happened the birds flew directly over my position.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Elk Walking Across Grassland

June 11, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Tule Elk walking across grassland at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

I know I promised that the previous one would be the last… but, yes, one more tule elk photograph. (For now? ;-) This one was slightly apart from the others in the group as they began to move off to the right, and I managed to time this photograph so that the others were out of the frame. Beyond that… perhaps not a lot new to say about photographs of tule elk at Point Reyes! :-)

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Three Pelicans, Blue Sky

June 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Three pelicans fly along the California Pacific coastline under clearing fog and blue sky.

To my surprise, I got to feed my pelican obsession on Memorial Day. As we drove up the coast north of Santa Cruz, where the road frequently follows the edges of coastal bluffs where they drop off into the Pacific, we started to notice larger than usual groups of pelicans heading north and riding the updrafts next to the cliffs. Having watched these birds many times before, I have learned a bit about their “traffic patterns,” so I suspected that if we went a bit further north to where the road comes down at a beach where a creek enters the ocean that we might encounter the same birds as they, too, dropped down to the water’s edge.

My hunch turned out to be right, and a few minutes after we arrived I caught a glimpse of the distant flock coming around the edge of the bluffs to the south and starting to descend toward the beach. They approached over the edge of the surf, but then turned toward the land as they started to climb again to rise above the next bluff to the north – and for a few seconds I was able to track and photograph them against the thinning fog and blue sky.

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