Tag Archives: wildlife

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

Elephant Seal and Rock, Water’s Edge

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Elephant Seal and Rock, Water's Edge - An elephant seal lies near a rock at the edge of the surf, Point Reyes National Seashore, California.
An elephant seal lies near a rock at the edge of the surf, Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

Elephant Seal and Rock, Water’s Edge. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. June 24, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An elephant seal lies near a rock at the edge of the surf, Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

The elephant seals have made what seems like a largely successful recovery along the California coast, and they are now found in quite a few places. I photographed this one and some of its fellows while doing landscape photography at Point Reyes – the actual point, not just the generic park – in late June. They are big beasts and while it is possible to make a “cute” photograph of an elephant seal, especially a young one, they seem like quite tough creatures. To begin with, their environment is not always exactly benign. In addition, they spar. Males have a challenge ritual that is fairly often observed. They face off, raising their upper bodies as high as possible, and then they slash and bite at one another. The result is not always pretty, at it isn’t at all unusual to see them bearing some very horrifying wounds from these battles.

This one, however, looks quite peaceful. (The fighting action was taking place just off shore and out of the range of the camera in this shot.) As I paused along a less windy section of the trail along the bluffs, hoping to find some shelter while I switched lenses, I heard the distinctive sounds of the elephant seals coming from the base of the bluffs. Looking over the edge into a small cove, I saw a group of them laid out along the beach. Soon they began to move about, and some headed straight for the water. This one went just a bit beyond the wave line, and then simply lazed about and let the water wash over.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Elephant Seals in Surf

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Elephant Seals in Surf - Two elephant seals spar in the surf at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.
Two elephant seals spar in the surf at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

Elephant Seals in Surf. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. June 24, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two elephant seals spar in the surf at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

After over a month of not exposing a single frame, I needed to go out and start shooting again this past week. (June is often a very busy time of year for me, and this June was especially challenging in a number of ways.) So, even though it is finals week at the college and I have a lot of papers to grade and loose ends to tie up, I managed to get away for a half day to photograph at Point Reyes. I went there with few specific ideas about what to shoot, instead just sort of hanging loose, enjoying whatever I could find, and making photographs as I found them. I started by taking an unplanned detour out towards Tomales Point – I was sort of killing time while waiting for the light to do the right stuff, and I thought it would be interesting to head out there and see the tule elk. After that I returned to the main road and headed out toward the Point Reyes lighthouse.

It actually was not my plan to go to the lighthouse, and didn’t even drive the last little bit of roadway to that site. Instead I took the turn towards the start of the Chimney Rock trail, with a general plan of being high up on the bluffs of this southernmost section of the Point when the good light arrived. I pulled in, at a sandwich for dinner, loaded up my camera gear, and headed out along the trail. I had a few things in mind. I know that shooting back along the steep, rocky cliffs of the Point late in the day can be dramatic, and I started by photographing there – fortunately my timing turned out to be almost exactly right, as I caught a last bit of light on the mist and haze along the shoreline before the sun moved too far north to continue to light the area. I then moved on out the end of the trail, where I just sat for a while as I waited for the early evening color to come to the light. I made a few photographs out here, stopped again along the bluffs to photograph along the point (but the best light had passed), made a few photographs back across Drakes Bay, and then started back towards a low point, protected from the wind, from which I thought I might try to photograph the Farallons right at sunset. Once I got there, the light on the islands seemed uninteresting, but I soon realized that the guttural sounds of elephant seals that I had been hearing were coming from the base of the cliff on which I was standing. I moved a bit closer to the edge – but not too close! – and was able to shoot straight down on a group of elephant seals as they alternately lay around on the beach and sparred in the shallow surf just beyond the sand.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Three Tule Elk, Grassland

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Three Tule Elk, Grassland - Three tule elk grazing along the headlands area at Point Reyes National Seashore.
Three tule elk grazing along the headlands area at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Three Tule Elk, Grassland. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. May, 30, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three tule elk grazing along the headlands area at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Although I was certainly aware that there are tule elk herds at Point Reyes National Seashore, I was not thinking about them when we encountered this group. We had driven out to the Point Reyes lighthouse and other areas at the extreme end of the peninsula, and had then stopped at Drakes Beach on the return trip. Finishing up at the beach, we got back in the car and headed up the hill towards the main road. As we reached an area near the top of the hill I thought I saw something moving off to the side, but I initially failed to recognize what I was seeing because the possibility of such animals in this place was not on my mind. I thought I was perhaps seeing a fence or something similar, but I couldn’t make sense out of why the fence would be moving!

A moment later we were a bit closer and it was obvious that a small herd of the tule elk were grazing very close to the fence along the road. I got out of the car and quietly attached a long lens to my camera and began to photograph these animals. The lighting and other circumstances were nearly perfect. It was very late in the day and the golden hour light had just started, and the backdrop was either the rolling hills you see here or, if I moved a bit to one side, some higher hills further to the west. This group of three large animals was moving, along with other animals not included in this shot, away from the road and further out into the meadows. As the three of them lined up in parallel, for a moment one swung its head around and looked directly towards me.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Wildlife

Snow Geese and Farm Buildings

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Snow Geese and Farm Buildings - Snow geese fly low past a Skagit Valley farm, Washington.
Snow geese fly low past a Skagit Valley farm, Washington.

Snow Geese and Farm Buildings. Skagit Valley, Washington. February 19, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Snow geese fly low past a Skagit Valley farm, Washington.

Back in February I was fortunate to be able to spend a day photographing migratory (and other) birds in the lower Skagit Valley area in the state of Washington. For me the primary draw was the snow geese, since I had just spent several days photographing Ross’s geese in California’s Central Valley, along with the beautiful trumpeter swans that hang out in the fields in this part of Washington. I had also been alerted to the presence of bald eagles in the area.

I drove up very early in the day from the Seattle area, arriving at just about the time that would have been sunrise… if it had not been a typical gray Washington day. I passed through a small town by the highway and then headed out into this farm country, immediately spotting scattered groups of trumpeter swans, whose large white bodies stand out clearly against the intense green of the new growth in the fields. However, all of these birds were too far from the roads, so I moved on, soon passing what looked like a country produce stand in front of a fallow field that where there were some geese. I stopped – and immediately heard that striking sound of the huge flocks of geese – and got out my camera gear to see what I could do. At this point I looked around a bit more and saw flock after flock of birds high in the sky to the west and heading this direction. Very soon all of these flocks began land on this very field where I had fortuitously stopped and in minutes there were tens of thousands of geese on the ground and many more flying routes above and around the field.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.