A Different Kind of Magic

Our second trip to the California Coast was to Shell Beach, about seven miles north of Doran Regional Park.  We did this on a previous hike with Jeff and Debbie, and I was hoping we would see the White-Tailed Kites we had seen then.  In anticipation I’d brought my 600mm lens with a 1.4 multiplier, my current favorite birding lens when I’m not shooting from the car or from my tripod.  In retrospect, I wish I had taken the 100mm-400mm lens, but wishing you had the “other” lens is common when taking photographs.  It’s about as helpful as wishing you were forty years younger and could carry two cameras.

You can’t take very good scenic photos with an 840 mm lens, so I did what I’ve done several times in the past, pulled out my iPhone 11 and took this shot.

It turned out better than I expected, though I’m sure it would have turned out better if I had brought my wide-angle lens for my Canon R5.  

This closeup was taken much further away with my Canon R5 and 600mm lens is sharper with more detail but doesn’t seem as “scenic” to me.

We only saw a few common birds, like this Savannah Sparrow.  

I did manage to get a shot of a Tiger Swallowtail, though, something I only see months later in the Puget Sound.

Shell beach is the main attraction on this section of the coastline, but these rocks are another attraction. They don’t look very big in a photo, but there were actually two climbers with ropes and harnesses scaling them.   They remind me of the Stonehenge replica that overlooks the Columbia River in Klickitat County, WA.  

In retrospect, I wondered if these rock formations had inspired someone to construct a small magical maze filled with various offerings mostly collected from nearby

with what appeared to be an abalone shell containing coins and a green piece of jewelry at the center of the maze.  

I really wish I had had a drone so that I could have gotten a shot of the whole maze with all the various offerings, but my iPhone had trouble getting a shot without my feet appearing in the middle of the picture.