Condor Country

I've had a list of wildlife I've wanted to see in California ever since I moved here. The California Condor was the final member of that list that I had never seen, until today.

I'd read on the Internet about one of the better places to stand a chance of seeing this very rare bird (it's currently being brought back from the edge of extinction) just south of Big Sur, so I headed down.

I found the anonymous spot on Highway 1, pulled over and looked up at the mountains behind me. After a few minutes of seeing some hawks and some turkey vultures, I spotted something bigger drifting along the ridge line and got the binoculars on it - sure enough, a Condor - woohoo!

At this point I'm a long way aways from where they are, and no way of getting any closer, but even so, it was very cool to see. I took the big lens with me, so I managed some photos with my 400 and a 1.4x on it - though the photos are, as expected, fairly poor due to the distance involved, heat haze, strong wind (blowing me around) and salt spray mist coming up off ocean getting between me and the birds too.

I've included the best one below - it shows three Condors after they dropped down below the upper ridge line - in all, I saw six condors (these three are adults, I saw at least one juvenile too).


If you look carefully (on the bigger version - click the smaller one above to get to the bigger version), you can see some red and yellow blobs on the wings (on the leading edge, about mid way down each wing) - I believe these are the radio transmitter tags that allow the conservationists to keep track of the birds to help ensure the species survives.

Guard Hawk??

Went for a bicycle ride today and came across this juvenile hawk sitting on this sign. Either the hawk is used to people, or doesn't know any better yet, but it let me get close enough to snap this photo with the P&S.


The question is - did the golf course hire the hawk to enforce the no trespassing, or is the hawk actually trespassing?

Fishing Made Easy

Went for a bike ride along the coast today instead of the normal weekend mountain bike ride as it had rained a lot during the last couple of days so off road would be too gloopy.

As typically happens when storms roll through, the surf is also up - it maxed out a few days ago, but was still looking good at Asilomar beach this morning, along with some storm like clouds (even though it was far from likely to storm).


Later in the day I came across an egret in the harbor. I watched it for five minutes and it caught three fish - easy pickings in the tide pools. Photos with the P&S.

San Carlos Beach Sunrise

I accidentally woke up early this morning, and decided to go check the weather, just in case there was some cloud cover that looked suitable for a nice sunrise.

The cloud cover did look good, so I quickly got dressed and grabbed the camera and headed down to San Carlos Beach.


I managed to get an OK photo of the sunrise with some rocks and an piece of an old cannery in the shot, then headed to Starbucks for a hot chocolate before returning home.