Category Archives: Photographs: Wildlife

Commentary, Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Brown Pelican in Flight

June 1, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Brown pelican flight above the shoreline of Monterey Bay, Moss Landing, California

Rediscovering this photograph and a few of its buddies makes for a bit of an odd story. Earlier today I got a message telling me that one of the drives attached to my computer was nearly full. That seemed a bit surprising, but it also was clearly an issue I had to address, so I set about looking for unnecessary files on that volume. In doing so I “discovered” a folder full of raw files and a few Photoshop files that I had apparently transferred to the computer last year… and then forgot. Most of the files there turned out to be unneeded, and I reclaimed 5GB of disk space by deleting them. But among there were s small number of shorebird photographs that I had forgotten.

The photographs came from an amazing and surprising spur-of-the-moment visit to Monterey Bay last June. For weeks I had been hearing stories of whales coming very close to the shoreline, and I had even observed a few from the cliffs in the Big Sur area. A news story claimed that they were now inside Monterey Bay and even coming very close to the beaches an Moss Landing — and friends had photographs to prove it. So over the hill we went to go there ourselves. When we arrived we were, indeed, impressed by how close the whales came to the beach — I had no idea they did that. But as impressive was the huge collection of birds that was perhaps attracted to the same food sources that drew the whales. I had never seen such numbers of these birds along the coast. Among them were a large number of brown pelicans, so many that photographing them was almost too easy.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Cormorants, Coastal Rocks

May 15, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cormorants nesting on rugged coastal rocks at Point Lobos State Reserve, California

Following a significant bit of photography near the end of April and the beginning of May, I had hardly picked up my camera for nearly a month — and I was itching to get out and make new photographs. Time was still tight, but I found a free day and headed off to the coastal areas of the Monterey Peninsula and the northern reaches of the Big Sur coastline, ending up at Point Lobos. Frankly, as much as I wanted to make photographs, I also simply wanted to get outside for a bit, and a morning of hiking and photographing here fit the bill perfectly.

The rock in the distance on which some cormorants are nesting is actually an island — an island that at some times of year is covered with many hundreds of all kinds of shore birds. This time there were far fewer. It could have been a seasonal thing, or it might be related to the changes in ocean temperature that have caused harm to marine mammals this season. In any case, I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose the small group of black birds with a landscape of rugged rock, so I wandered a bit until I found this camera position that put nothing but rocks between me and the island.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Turkey Vultures

May 7, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Turkey vultures on coastal rocks, Point Lobos State Reserve

Let me begin by pointing out that I did not go to this place to shoot turkey vultures. In fact, of all the things that I might have expected to see and photograph here, such critters were at the bottom of the list if they were even on it at all. Point Lobos is one of my local “go to” places when I have a half day or a day to photograph. I’ve been going there for literally decades, and I know many parts of this beautiful little park very well. (On the other hand, I hardly ever fail to discover something new when I visit, even after all of these years.) So I had gone there hoping to photograph things like morning fog, the conduction of rocks and surf, the coastal trees, and so forth.

I pulled into a parking lot along the main road and got out without my camera so that I could just look around a bit. As I scanned my surroundings I was surprised to see some large birds on rocks above the surf, birds that I did not immediately recognize. I soon was even more surprised when I realized that I was looking at a group of five turkey vultures — a bird that I’m more accustomed to seeing airborne, coasting on updrafts along inland coastal hills, and often seen alone. I didn’t have any good photographs of these birds, so I grabbed camera, long lens, and tripod and rectified that commission! In flight, these can be rather impressive birds — they are large and they coast quietly overhead. Yet their heads are a gaudy red color, and generally very wrinkled — this almost seems out of character with the rest of the bird. This group stood still for a few moments before, one by one, they gradually took to the air and departed.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Ross’s Geese, Evening Sky

March 28, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of Ross’s geese head west against the clouds of a winter evening sky

This may well end up being one of my final migratory bird photographs of the 2014-15 season. It seemed to wind down early this year, at least from what I saw. I suspect that this probably has something to do with the very unusual weather this winter in California. The temperatures were far above normal. In some places there averaged ten degrees higher than usual during the first three months of the year. Precipitation has also been way out of whack. There were some early indications of a possible wet year, then things seemed to be put on hold… until some serious rain (at my elevation) in December, which brought back memories of what winter used to be like in California. Then the tap seemed to be shut off with the new year, and where I live we went nearly 50 days with no rainfall whatsoever at what should be the wettest time of the year. It finally rained again, but not much. More troubling, the Sierra experience roughly 10% of typical precipitation levels, and this is the fourth year of below normal precipitation.

Despite the climate challenges, the season did produce some truly wonderful days of bird photography in the Central Valley. One thing that helped was a long period of tule fog in the Valley, which I find picturesque. Eventually the birds showed up, and we had a great stretch of geese and cranes and more up through the middle of February. At the end of the month we headed to the Sierra for an exhibit at the Yosemite Renaissance, stopping on the way to visit the birds. We didn’t see many at all, and when we stopped again on the way back things hadn’t changed much. Late in the day we did find a group of Ross’s geese on a pond, and I caught groups of them as they departed to the south and west.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Wildlife

Brown Pelican in Flight

Cormorants, Coastal Rocks

Turkey Vultures

Ross’s Geese, Evening Sky

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.