Thanksgiving in the Company of Condors and Beach Boys

As typically happens, I spent my Thanksgiving in a non traditional US way - 'cos I'm not really a traditional US resident.

Instead of the typical turkey dinner, I went in search of Condors (not to eat, I hasten to add). I went down to the place where they often congregate, but today they weren't hanging out there.

The weather was great though, so I decided I would hang out there for a while, and then I spotted one flying over the top of me - of course, the camera was still in the car.

I headed down to the second place they're supposed to congregate and again hung out and enjoyed the weather - and again, one flew over me, quite high above me, but this time the camera was ready.

I drove a bit further south as that's where the birds were heading, but no joy. I turned around and was heading back up to Monterey, but as I approached the original location, I saw the condor docent waving her aerial in the air, so I pulled in and checked in with her to see if she was picking up condor signals.

She was not picking any up. There was also a couple of folks setting up a camera on a tripod to take their Christmas photo with the Big Sur coastline in the background. After chatting with the docent for a couple of minutes, she headed off in search of condor radio signals and I ended up helping this couple (a brother and sister) take their holiday photo.

I got chatting with them and they too were locals who are into the condors so we all decided to hang around to see if condors appeared or not. We got lucky as another appeared, again high.

While this condor was flying over and I was kneeling on the ground trying to keep the bird in the viewfinder with the big lens on the camera, some other guy who had pulled into the turnout was asking me about my camera.

I did my best to answer whilst still trying to take photos of the bird, but needless to say, he didn't get my full attention and the couple stepped in to help him with his camera questions.

After the bird had left, the guy left too and the couple came over to me - "do you know who that was?" - I had no clue, but apparently it was one of the original Beach Boys, Al Jardine (I've looked him up online since and yes, it was him).

I hung around chatting with the brother and sister, eating her home made chocolate chip cookies and hoping for more condors and just enjoying the lovely weather (I was in a t-shirt and it's the end of November!) - we saw one more condor, but it was a way aways.

Finally, I drove back up home as the sun was setting - in my book, a really nice Thanksgiving day - and in the spirit of the holiday, I certainly did feel thankful sitting on the guard rail at the side of highway 1 in the sunshine looking out for very large birds and taking photos of them.