We started the day at Audubon Canyon Ranch watching California Towhees and other common species from Nils deck enjoying bird friendly shade grown coffee and home made muffins.
Wilson's Warblers were a common migrant for the day/
We headed over to Point Reyes National Seashore and decided to go see the Elephant Seals at Drakes Beach section, while having lunch in the parking lot curious California Scrub-jays joined our group.
Jays provide great opportunity to test optimum camera settings as they are so cooperative and photogenic. Even in mid-day sun this bird allowed me to capture some of its natural brilliance, color and feather detail. Shot at 1/800 sec at f 5.6 and 400 ISO the background became soft enough to bring the bird completely to the eye's attention while the snag it was perched on is also pretty photogenic and provides a nice addition to the beauty of the jay. Even with noon sun you can make out the nasal feathers of the bird.
This Hutton's Vireo was a treat as I rarely see them living on the US East Coast. They are skulkers and make it more difficult to capture all their feathering detail because they stay deeper in the thickets than the jays do. I used the same settings as I had done with the jay in the previous image and the background is very soft and helps accentuate the bird but I lost feather detail on the underparts and picked up more noise. Vireos and Warblers also pose a special challenge to get any eye detail. While I like the feathering detail of this bird around the head, beill and upper wings it would only be a great shot if I could have drawn some more detail of the bird's iris giving it a sense of life.
Even though this Red-tailed Hawk's picture is not super clear I included it to remind myself of how many color variationsRed-tails produce across the country, especially dark ones in the western states.
The target species for this site visit, the Elephant Seal. Due to the ferocious storms of the winter, the Drake Beach area had been closed to visitors because of flooding and dangerous conditions. The Elephant Seals took over the Parking Lot during that lull in human visitation and for awhile the Park Service had to close the area to human visitors. It was reopened as Seal activity moved back down the beach. The day we were there bulls had already left the beaches and females and young were lounging getting warm so they can reenter that cold Pacific Ocean water to feed.
The light was so bright with the sand amplifying it and their light tone fur that I was shooting at 1/3200 sec at f 5.6. I had the ISO at 400 which was too high but I like the results in these images.
This was a surprising species for us, a Rive Otter who Nils told us was probably hunting the Surf Scoters that were just off-shore.
This was the closest the Scoters allowed me to get for an ID image.
Young Double-crested Cormorant in the pond behind Drakes Beach
Final species of the Point Reyes Drake Beach area was a pair of California Quail who were enjoying the ease of which the freshly mowed parking lot meridians' grass provided them seed and insects to munch on.
Even at the high speed of 1/3200 sec at f 5.6 the heat haze plays games with the camera's sensor causing noise blur but this bird's camouflage is too cool not to record.
