Now that I’m back to walking, we’ve tried to take advantage of every break in the clouds. I don’t usually take my camera when we’re just walking for exercise, but when we decided to walk the Dunes Trail I took my new camera hoping to get a better picture of the Sea Lions lounging on the new rock outcropping. I thought I’d managed to get good shot of them this time, but once I put the shots up on the screen I realized that they were actually Harbor Seals.
The gulls were also obvious, but not even Leslie, who was using the binoculars, noticed that there were also Turnstones on the rocks.
Luckily, while observing the “seal lions,” I happened to look down on the rocks just below us and notice movement. There were so many Turnstones that it was impossible to isolate them and ended up with this. How many can you count?
The photographer in me hates shots like this where you have extraneous body parts lying around, but I did manage to isolate a single Turnstone in this shot.
When you’ve been photographing wildlife as long as I have you learn to pay attention to what the crows and gulls are doing. A small flock of them kept diving and taking off quite a ways off, and though I couldn’t tell while I was actually photographing I suspected there was a Sea Lion feeding, and, sure enough, you can just spot his back next to the gull on the left.
I confirmed that hunch with this shot and knew where the Sea Lions I was looking for on the rocks had gone to.
Apparently disturbed by the flock of gulls, this Double-Crested Cormorant decided to find a quieter fishing area.
