In the final week of June, amidst last-minute (and high-stress) packing and planning, I said goodbye to northern California and some of the amazing environments I've been lucky enough to explore over the past year.
Two young Common Ravens watched our small group of explorers as we wandered the Arcata Marsh one last time:
What little water was left in the low-tide bay evaporated into mist in the hot sun:
And I couldn't resist some final pictures of this place's gregarious Marsh Wrens:
Look, a Marsh Wren tongue!
A trip to the beach at sunset also seemed remarkably appropriate for our final days in California. I love the combination of waves and low sunlight:
What a cool thing, to see the sun disappearing behind the Pacific Ocean:
Big waves and a Brown Pelican make the scene even more dramatic:
Northwestern California really is an incredible place, and I can't think of many other parts of the country I'd be as excited to live in for a year. It was an amazing experience, indeed.
Even more exciting, though, is what's up next: a familiar environment that I dearly love, yet with new and fantastic areas to explore, and the possibility of settling down for a good long while and finally making a place my home. All of this is coming soon. But first, I have sights to share from that little endeavor, moving across the country. Stay tuned!
I think the ocean is awesome, and I know so little about the creatures that live there, especially away from shore. Unfortunately, as I discovered on a whale-watching trip a few years ago, I get quite seasick if I actually go out on the open water. So when I learned that there's a jetty at the mouth of Humboldt Bay -- a short drive from our house -- where one can walk nearly half a mile out onto the ocean, I was intrigued. Open water with ocean birds, mammals, and waves, but no rocking floor to try to stand on? Yes please!
On Friday afternoon, at low tide (apparently this place gets dangerous when the tide is high), Paul and I took a trip out to the north jetty at the Samoa Dunes Recreation Area, and it was indeed awesome. I don't often get to see waves from this perspective:
And surfers are downright novel for me; there were several people out enjoying the waves on Friday:
Yes, the ocean is intense:
I'm learning that Common Murres are quite, well, common at the shores around here, and a few of these birds were swimming in the water close to the jetty. This is such a handsome bird up close; I love that line behind its eye, and those big paddling feet and sleek pointed wings (so useful for moving underwater):
This murre had just popped up from a dive in this next picture, and it's still got its protective nictitating membrane covering its eyes:
An Osprey was hunting over the fog-shrouded waves:
It made some impressive dives, although I didn't see it actually catch anything:
Brown Pelicans were cruising around; these birds are downright massive, especially compared to the gulls that kept trailing them hoping for fish:
A few ocean mammals showed up, too! This Harbor Seal seemed to be watching us for a bit:
And a few Harbor Porpoises went by!
I can't believe I live in a place where I can see marine mammals. The birds and scenery are awesome, too, of course, but whenever I'm near open ocean I'll certainly be watching the waves for fins and faces. There's so much to see around here, and I'm still just getting started!
After our family-filled Pine Barrens adventure this past weekend, Paul and I continued south to visit some friends on the eastern shore of Maryland. And since we were already in the area, we decided to spend Monday morning in a very cool place: Assateague Island!
My parents claim that I've been to Assateague before, but I don't remember that trip. All I know is that I read the Misty of Chincoteague books when I was little, and ever since then Assateague has been a quasi-fantastical place in my mind, where untamed horses (pony-sized but apparently technically horses) have roamed free for centuries. So the big question on Monday morning was: would we see any horses? Our answer came as soon as we drove across the bridge onto the island! (Yes!)
The northern part of Assateague Island is in Maryland, and the southern part is in Virginia, and the feral horses on the two portions of the island (~100-150 animals in each part) are kept separate and maintained differently by different organizations. (The Maryland portion of the island also has a state portion and a federal portion; it's all quite confusing.) In the Maryland part of Assateague -- where we were -- the horses wander wherever they want and are treated with contraceptives to manage the population but otherwise have no human interaction. (In Virginia, the horses get veterinary care and are periodically auctioned away as pets.) These are definitely wild creatures, and we saw signs all over the place warning people not to get too close; these horses bite, kick, trample, etc.
In any case, we saw horses in several places on the island. They foraged out in the marsh:
And they grazed in the middle of the campgrounds (this picture has a passing bicyclist for perspective):
Hello, beautiful creature:
Horses are the famous highlight of a trip to Assateague, but we saw lots of other cool things here, too. I loved walking on this beach; the landscape is so very different from what we have in Connecticut. Who knew beaches and dunes could be so vast:
The tracks and tunnels of Ghost Crabs were all over the beach, but we only got fleeting glimpses of these creatures before they dove back into their holes:
A male Common Yellowthroat sang out his ownership of a particular area of the dunes:
How cool to be in a place where big Brown Pelicans soar by overhead:
We went into the marsh fearing the tons of biting insects that we'd heard haunt this island in the summer. Instead we only found hoards of small and beautiful dragonflies, Seaside Dragonlets (Erythrodiplax berenice), a species which has the distinction of being the only dragonfly in the western hemisphere to breed in salt water:
Most of the Seaside Dragonlets we saw were these slate-colored individuals, which might have been males or dark-colored females:
But there were also several female Seaside Dragonlets with just shockingly bright yellow-striped outfits:
What a fantastic creature!
It was indeed a successful visit, and now we're back in Connecticut for a few final weeks.... Adventures abound!
We had an awesome time exploring the San Diego shore, and we got to hang out up close with some pretty cool creatures. I mentioned the seals and squirrels in my last post, but the birds, especially, seemed completely unafraid of people, and many let us get within a few feet of them without showing any signs of discomfort. Some of the birds, like this Snowy Egret, were ones that I already knew from my home on the east coast, but that didn't make them any less cool:
Check out those yellow feet! This fancy fellow was hanging out on our whale-watching boat, perhaps keeping an eye on us in case we dropped some fish. (Hey, you never know!)
Even though I've seen egrets and herons plenty of times now at the ocean, I still find myself surprised to see them there, I guess because for some reason I have it in my head that these should be fresh water birds. Either way, we found another Snowy Egret hunting in the tidal pools near our hotel. They're such elegant little birds, and this one looks almost like it has horns:
I saw Brown Pelicans for the first time just a few weeks ago, in New Orleans, but not in nearly as large numbers as they were here:
So many pelicans! These pelicans were also much more brightly colored than the ones I saw in Louisiana -- I don't know for sure whether this is because of some regional difference, or if these birds were coming into breeding plumage, or maybe a combination of both. (The internet is inconclusive on this question.) In any case, I definitely didn't see anything near this shade of red when I was watching those other Brown Pelicans last month:
This cute Black Phoebe was a new bird for me, although it looked almost identical to our Eastern Phoebe from back home -- the only difference that I could see was its all-black breast, and it was making a chirping sound instead of the familiar "phoe-bee" call:
So many of the gulls on the beaches looked all the same to me (I'm still not very good at identifying gulls), except for one strikingly different species. This handsome fellow is a Heermann's Gull, a species that lives only along the Pacific coast:
I don't know of any other gull that has a head lighter than its body. And how about that bright red beak, and the ring around its eyes?
Here's something interesting that I learned just now: The Heermann's Gull is listed globally as near threatened (on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species) because, although its population is relatively stable, 90% of its entire worldwide population nests on a single small island, and if something happens to the island, there goes the gull! Fortunately, the island is well protected, so it doesn't sound like these birds are in any immediate danger. Maybe you should think about spreading out a little, gull!
Back at the beach near our hotel, we had a lot of fun poking around in the tidal pools, with the ocean roaring nearby but failing to reach us:
My camera is woefully incapable of taking clear pictures through the surface of the water, so I don't have any shots of the many hermit crabs and seaweed-green fish we found in the pools. But there were plenty of things to see above the water, too, like these carefully closed-up barnacles and chiton -- these are barely recognizable as animals, but they'll come back to life once the tide comes in!
And speaking of animals in hiding, Paul was the first to notice these strange doughnut-shaped mounds of shells in several places on the rocks:
We had no idea what could've been gathering bits of shell together like that, and on closer inspection, the shells turned out to be all stuck together. Then we found a similar mound covered by a little water, and that provided the answer to our mystery:
Sea anemonies!
The creatures in tidal zones are always amazing -- what a crazy environment to have to live in, and it seems like they do a good job of it!
I have one more creature from our trip that I'd like to share, but it's going to have to get its own post. (I took too many pictures, and it's too cool!) So one more day of spring-like San Diego, and then it's back to normal post about gray/snowy/rainy/wet Connecticut!
After my walk with my family through the Barataria Preserve, I didn't expect to see much more in the way of wildlife on our stay in New Orleans. As it turns out, I was completely wrong! While visiting various parts of the city, we passed by rivers, lakes, and parks, all of which were teaming with life, and I got to hang out with some awesome southern birds. It's a good thing I decided to carry my camera with me everywhere!
Our hotel was only a few blocks from the Mississippi River, and while we were exploring the Riverwalk one morning, we came across two Brown Pelicans, one in the water and one on the pier:
This was my first time really looking closely at these strange creatures, and there are so many things I found to love about them -- that cool white mohawk; the scary hook at the tips of their beaks:
That oversized beak looks like it should be unwieldy, but the pelicans were not at all clumsy in preening themselves:
And look, the pelican's back is also a pillow:
The Brown Pelicans may look a little awkward on land, but they seem much more balanced on the water:
And they showed their full size and power when they took flight:
Now those are some awesome birds.
In the center of the city, away from the water, House Sparrows (unsurprisingly) were everywhere, and they were remarkably tame. I got very close to a few House Sparrows drinking and bathing in a fountain in the French Quarter:
I'm not a huge fan of House Sparrows in general, but you have to admit, these fellows are pretty darn cute:
We spent some time walking through the grounds of City Park, and there were birds everywhere. One pond near the art museum, in particular, was teeming with waterfowl, and the fact that two guys were standing there throwing whole loaves of bread into the water meant that we got to see some cool birds very close up. There were some bizarre domesticated birds, like this Muscovy Duck:
Dozens of wild birds also decided to make this pond their home, including a flock of pretty White Ibises:
And jostling for position with the gulls and ibises was a single Anghinga (if I moved any more to the right when taking this picture, I would've fallen into the water):
I think this is a simply gorgeous bird, although I do feel like its elegance is a little offset by the total goofiness of its feet:
This adorable little Pied-billed Grebe wasn't partaking in the free bread, as far as I could tell, but it also didn't swim too quickly away from us as it dove in and out of the water:
In other parts of City Park, away from the magically bread-filled pond, the birds were still abundant, but less willing to stay close to us. We watched this American Kestrel swoop from its perch high in the trees to go hunting in the field below:
And a Loggerhead Shrike perched on a wire above our heads before flying off again after its next meal:
On the last day of our visit, we drove to Lake Pontchartrain, where I snuck up close to a group of Cattle Egrets feeding on a grassy bank next to the parking lot:
These birds didn't seem to mind my presence, and I had a lot of fun taking their pictures.
Pretty birds!
So it was a pretty excellent trip. Some of these birds are ones that just don't live near my home up north, and I got to meet a bunch of cool creatures that I'd never seen before.
I have one last thing to share from the trip, although it's not technically alive. In one of the city's art galleries that we randomly wandered into, we found some wooden carvings of birds that were just phenomenal. The artist's name is Mike Bonner, and I own no rights to this work:
I still cannot believe that this is wood! That Northern Pintail looks like it's about to swim right off the shelf. And this picture doesn't at all do justice to the incredible amount of detail in every single carved feather:
It just goes to show, even in the city, and even inside buildings, you never know when you'll find beauty and nature.
