Wildlife

Ravens, Revisited

Working through unedited photos from last summer, I came across several pictures of juvenile ravens from Kamchatka. Looking at them, I was reminiscing about that trip and the circumstances of encountering the birds. A friend and I were exploring an abandoned 5-story dormitory building outside of town we were in, when we spotted a raven’s nest perched high on top of the building. The juvenile raven, […]

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Piscivorous Birds

I feel like I am cheating posting another photo of a Brown Pelican, especially that my dedicated Brown Pelican posting was only a month away. But I am a bit overwhelmed, and my anticipated posting on the Klamath River Yoruk tribe commercial fishery will have to wait till next week. To tie the post together, here’s a photo of an osprey looking for fish.

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Sea nettles

During my move to northern California a few months back, I stopped by the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon. It is one of my favorite public aquariums by far, although I haven’t made it to the Monterey Bay Aquarium yet, and I hear it’s quite nice. It was a January morning with very few visitors, so I had the aquarium mostly to myself. A

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California Brown Pelican

It’s hard to miss these peculiar brown birds gliding, in small groups, above braking waves of the ocean edge, disappearing into the fog. The Brown Pelican is the smallest of the 8 species of Pelecanus. It’s mesmerizing to watch them glide 30 feet above the surface looking for aggregations of small fish, bomb-diving for them, once spotted, head straight down, wings half-stretched, often disappearing completely

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Sea Lion Pup

I’ve been spotting California sea lion and harbor seal pups lately around beaches from Fields Landing to Crescent City, California. As adorable as they look, it’s not a good sign that they mingle so closely with people. Being so young, they are very trustworthy and the Crescent City-based Marine Mammal Rescue Center has been busy capturing and rehabilitating them. Last week, I almost tripped over

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