Watery Wednesday #76

One of these days I'll be able to do more to my photo blog than my Watery Wednesday additions, but I so love sharing my photos and hope you enjoy them. These and the one on the main Watery Wednesday meme page are from my trip back to Bolas Chica this past weekend. It was beautiful to me, cloudy and all.


This is the beach directly across the street. Normally I don't go over to it but this day I could hear and actually see the waves crashing and it lured me over. It was beautiful.


From this view you can't tell that the storm clouds were behind me slowly edging their way in this direction. And... the one below is watery but I couldn't resist posting this capture.

Happy Watery Wednesday!

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Brown Pelican

I've spent the last few days cleaning out my hard drive that has all of my photos on it. 120 gigs and I only had 4 left. I've now got 43 gigs left and most my photos are a little more organized. I'm still working on transfering more to DVD's. It's been tiresome on the one hand but fun finding photos I'd forgotten I'd taken and never shared. I thought I'd post these of the brown pelican.


I love taking shots of the pelican and I've got enough photos to prove it. I think it has such an interesting face and it's one of the few birds I've managed to easily catch in flight. These were taken at Cabrillo Beach.

A Few Water Fowl

I took these at the Los Angeles Arboretum. This is the first time I've seen a Mandarin Duck. It was so pretty. Both it and the Wood Duck just waddled over in front of my path and let me take as many photos as I wanted. Wish I could share all of those shots.

WOOD DUCK



MANDARIN DUCK



I've only ever seen a Black Crowned Night Heron once before, at it was also here at the Los Angeles Arboretum near the small lake. I saw the first one on the bent trunk of a tree and was able to get close enough for my zoom to take good shots. Then less than as I left that one, about 20 yards away there was another. I didn't post any of those shots.

BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON




I've only ever seen the black or dark grey cormorans. This is the first time I've seen these light gray ones.

PIED CORMORANT

My World Tuesday/Nature Notes - RSABG #5

I've been posting about my visit to Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Gardens. I wanted to finally give you a glimpse of what it actually looks like inside rather than just the things I photographed. The only thing I don't like about Rancho Santa Ana is that as far as the vegetation goes, you just about see the same thing no matter where you are except in the desert section where the cacti and desert plants grow.


Thought the paths and areas are different there's not much variety during your walk or hope of seeing something different than what you saw on the path you were on half an hour ago.


Having said that, I still enjoyed myself and would recommend it to anyone. It's sad they've started charging rather than just taking donations but I can imagine how many people walked in without dropping a dime in the donation bin.

I highly recommend clicking on some of the smaller photos so you can get a real view of the beauty and thick plants and trees that surround you along the paths.

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My World Tuesday - Birds of Bolsa Chica

Excuse my French but I walked my ass off today. I was already a good walk into the wetlands when I took the photo below. I walked down the path on the right. Now, on the left about midway up the picture do you see the houses waaaaay in the back against the sky. I walked down the path on the right and then waaaay over there. All I keep hearing in my head are these lyrics, "What kind of fool am I?" LOL!

Please correct me if I got any of the names of the birds wrong.





BLUE BILL DUCK - I tried by best to get a good shot of this duck because the first thing I noticed about it was the blue bill. But each one that I saw seemed to know I was trying to take its photo and it would dive under water and turn up even further away from me.


EGRET - I haven't learned the differences between the egrets yet so I'll just identify this as an Egret. It was fun to watch this one tip toeing through the water seemingly stirring up life under the water and then it would duck it's head under the water trying to catch something.


LONG BILLED CURLEW - I could be wrong about this one too but it's the only one I identified that had a beak this long.

BLACK NAPED TERN - Not the best shot but worthy of posting just the same (smile).

I think these are sandpipers.

AMERICAN WIDEON - I was fascinated with this one because of the green around its eyes.


And I'm not sure what this one is either. I thought it only had one leg but when I got closer the other leg came down and it flew off.



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Red Shouldered Hawk; Plush Crested Jay; Cedar Waxwing

My Watery Wednesday shot is below this one.

I had a pretty good bird day even though I wasn't looking for them. Please correct me if I got the names wrong on the hawk and waxwings. Click on any image for a larger view.

CEDAR WAXWING

I was up at the lake watching someone feed the ducks, trying to capture one of the gulls in flight and heard all of these birds chirping. I looked up in the tree and it was absolutely full of birds, like fruit on the tree. I wish one of my shots of all of the birds had come out. This is what the tree was full of:




PLUSH CRESTED JAY

I took this at the arboretum at the zoo. The little blue beauty isn't always visible when I go. It's difficult for me to get a good shot of this one because of it's dark blue colors. These aren't perfect but they're not bad either.




RED SHOULDERED HAWK

This is another one I lucked up on at the zoo. I was looking at the seals when this large bird flew over head. My eyes followed it and I watched in land in a nearby tree. It let me get close enough to take a few shots. It watched me and then when it got bored of me, took off. I absolutely love the eyes on this bird.

Monochrome Monday - At The Beach

This is my first Monochrome Monday post. I don't know how often I can participate but I had a few shots to share this week so here goes:





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