When Paul and I lived in New Haven, we used to take walks -- sometimes during our lunch breaks -- to East Rock Park, which was just a few blocks from our apartment. That was one of my favorite thing about that apartment, actually: we were in the city, but East Rock was always right there for when we needed a nature fix.
This morning, we got a chance to revisit our old haunt, because Paul was running a 5K through East Rock Park. (He did well!) So while he was running uphill and helping refugees (it's nice when races are for charity), I rambled along the river at the boundary of the park with my camera.
Surprisingly, the blaring music from the race hadn't scared all the animals away -- but then I guess they might be used to noise, living on the edge of the city and all. I saw a few small birds (sparrows, a Downy Woodpecker, etc.) foraging in the bare trees, and I watched a pair of Mute Swans swimming on the river.
I remember we once saw swans with babies here, and I wonder if these ones will stick around long enough to raise a family. I probably won't be around to see it, but it was fun to see these impressive creatures right in the middle of such an otherwise bare landscape.
The temperatures are back to hovering around freezing, but I did spot some bulbs starting to poke through the ground next to the sidewalk.... I remember that bulbs sometimes come up rather early in New Haven, though, so I'm not getting my hopes up about this being a real sign of spring.
Boy, the weather has been crazy this winter. It was 50 degrees today, despite the fact that it's still January, and it's supposed to be 60 tomorrow. (Then it'll go back to the 30s and 40s again, but no sign of snow in the near future.) Just to underscore the total spring-ness of today, a moth spent some time flying around outside my office window a couple of hours ago. Go back to sleep, moth!
Anyway, with weather so nice, how could I not go out to the woods today? The lake ice at Naugatuck State Forest was all melted around the edges, enough for a pair of Mallards to be paddling around in the water, and a Belted Kingfisher was doing some fishing. The best part of the walk, though, was a bird that I only glimpsed briefly, from far away, before it flew off deeper into the woods:
Pileated Woodpeckers are totally the best, in my opinion, and this female (I think) was busy chiseling a nice big hole way up in this tree. Usually, I just see the holes that these birds make, and I haven't actually seen the woodpeckers themselves in a while, so I was excited to cross paths with this big girl. :)
I kept expecting to hear Spring Peepers today, it was so warm, but we're not quite there yet.... If we're not actually going to have real winter (i.e. snow), can't we just skip to spring?
So the seals, whales, and squirrels were awesome, and the gulls, egrets, and pelicans were fun, but probably my favorite creature that we met on our San Diego trip was one of the smallest things we saw:
This male Anna's Hummingbird was super tiny (as hummingbirds are), but I tell you, he was the star of the show. He had a patch of the La Jolla seaside cliffs staked out, right next to the sidewalk, and almost every time walked by the area -- several times over the course of two days -- this guy would be sitting on one branch or another, looking around eagerly and singing his little heart out with tiny wheezy trills:
I've never seen such a bold hummingbird before. And I don't know if this is a characteristic of Anna's Hummingbirds in general, or if this guy was just especially cheeky, but he cared not the slightest that streams of people were walking past just a few feet away from him, or that I was sitting there clicking my camera at him for minutes at a time. He'd flit off, presumably to inspect the nearby flowers, but then he'd always come back again and resume his show.
And really, he was something to see. All those feathers on his face look black in the first two pictures because they're not yet reflecting the light toward me. But when he turned his head just right...
If you want to attract some attention (some female attention perhaps?), that's how you do it. I couldn't tear myself away from this guy!
The range of colors that he produced was just dazzling -- and he was even brighter in real life than what the camera shows, although this is a pretty close approximation, as I remember it. I love the rusty maroons when the feathers just barely catch the light:
And the deep blue that starts to creep in at the really intense angles:
I took tons of pictures of this little fellow during several visits to his spot, and he was probably one of the best photography subjects I've ever had -- certainly the most obliging bird I've encountered!
Who would've guessed that such a tiny bird could have such a big personality?
I took a brief video of the little guy as well. Unfortunately, you can't hear his call, and the color isn't as good (or as accurate) as it is the pictures, but I love the way he raises and lowers his feathers, flashing that iridescence like a beacon in every direction.
And with that, the San Diego trip is now officially over -- and I think I saved the best for last. Here in Connecticut, it's gray and raining, and the snow is gone, but hopefully the weather will brighten up soon so I can get back out and visit my usual haunts. It's lots of fun to explore new places and see new things, but I do miss my familiar woods when I'm away!
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!
While the weather here in Connecticut got increasingly cold and wintry this past weekend (with six inches of new snow!), Paul and I took a trip across the country, all the way to San Diego. Neither of us had been there before, and I hadn't been to California for years, so it was quite the change of environment for us. We were technically there for a wedding, but we made sure to work in plenty of extra time to wander around and explore... and to look for animals, of course!
Our first scheduled activity, in fact, was an off-shore whale watch. What better way to start exploring a new place than to look for the giant creatures that live in its oceans? (Well, perhaps an activity that doesn't cause seasickness, which, it has now been confirmed, is definitely a problem for me! But, oh well.) And we did see whales. At least four big Gray Whales crossed our path on their southward migration. Mostly, we saw the mist shooting up from the whales' blowholes as they skimmed the surface to breathe:
And every few minutes, we'd get a glimpse of a fluke as the whales made a dive:
One of the whales even came close enough to show off its barnacle-covered back as it skimmed the water's surface:
I still can't really believe that such huge creatures exist under the water, and it was hard to get a real sense of their size from the little glimpses that they gave us. But really, it was just extraordinarily cool to be in their presence. Seasickness notwithstanding, it was a great little trip. We didn't get to see any dolphins, which are apparently very common in these waters, but we were greeted by a sunning California Sea Lion on our way back into the harbor:
(Sadly, it looks like this Sea Lion has some fishing line stuck around its neck. I hope the poor fellow will be OK...)
During the rest of our stay, we spent a lot of time wandering along the coastline near our hotel in La Jolla, which is a community in the northern part of San Diego. The shore here was just gorgeous, alternating between dramatic cliffs and sandy beaches, and with animals everywhere. There were tons of birds (look for more on those in a future post), but the creature that really got the two of us excited was another mammal. The small protected beach in this next picture is called Children's Pool, and it just happens to be a daily haven for a large group of Harbor Seals:
Harbor Seals are kind of amazing, in that they somehow manage to walk the line between ridiculously funny-looking and mind-meltingly adorable. I think they look more sleek than ungainly when they first emerge from the water:
And they get super fluffy when they've dried off in the sun, showing off beautiful speckled fur:
But even with all that fur and those fantastically cute faces, I can't help seeing the seals as big awkward blobs rolling around on the sand, especially when they move! I took a couple videos of beach action, so you can see what I mean:
I keep thinking they don't look like seals so much as caterpillars, or slugs, when they move. And yet, there's some sort of grace to their movements, even on land:
Even from behind the ropes that were put up to keep people and seals separate, we felt like we were really hanging out with the seals, and it was awesome. And blubber or no, the life of a seal sure looks good from this angle!
These Harbor Seals were definitely used to people hanging around, which meant that we could walk around just a few yards from them without disturbing them. There was another mammal inhabiting the cliffs of La Jolla that showed a similar lack of concern for people as well, not unlike some of its eastern urban relatives that I've encountered. Squirrel!
These California Ground Squirrels were all over the place, content to keep foraging as we stared and pointed at them, or, sometimes, to stare right back:
I don't know what this succulent ground cover is, but it must be delicious to a squirrel:
[Edit: The plant is probably either Ice Plant or Sea Fig, both of which are introduced and invasive in California. Thanks for the info, Chris!]
Nom!
We saw many other creatures on our trip, and I've got more cool things to share, so watch for another post (or maybe two?) in the near future!
