Tag Archives: wildlife

Tracking the Orcas

Orcas are cool. No avoiding it, they are a great looking whale. We spent a lot of time with this group on our tour with Monterey Bay Whale Watch. Because they kept offering up good opportunities to interact with them, we followed them a long way up the coast. We ended up off Davenport which meant, when we turned back, we had a long way to go to get back to Monterey. However, it was worth it. As we got further away from the normal whale watching boats and the group got more used to us, they got more relaxed.

We occasionally got ahead of them at which point they would swim towards us, sometimes crossing right behind the boat. At times like this, the team on the boat would drop a towed housing off the back with a GoPro mounted in it. They got some cracking footage as the whales got curious about the line and took a look at the camera. Meanwhile, we got to see them at very close quarters. It was so cool.

Getting good shots of the whales was trickier than I expected. They stay down for irregular times and predicting where they will pop up is hard. If you don’t get them coming out of the water, the head quickly dipped back under which makes for a far less impressive shot. You want to see the head and get the black and white patterns on display.

When you have a few hours with the whales, though, sooner or later you will get some good shots. This blog does not need to see the number of shots that are the same and only show the back of a whale as it heads back below the surface. The ones with the head visible and the ones that will be shared. Trust me, though. There are a lot of shots of the backs of whales with no visible head.

The boat team weren’t the only ones that took some video. I also shot a bunch of video as we went. Some of it was unusable as a result of the movement of the boat. Other clips were no use because I was looking in the wrong direction and the whales weren’t doing what I anticipated – don’t they know what I need? However, I still got a few clips that were what I was hoping for.

Breaching Humpback

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When you are looking for a dramatic view of a humpback whale, the coolest shot is of a breaching whale. Monterey Bay was full of whales while we were there. They really were everywhere you looked. Of course, being in a big area means that they may be visible but not necessarily good for photos. Actually, while a lot of them were pretty active, the numbers breaching versus slapping their tail flukes was relatively small.

However, we did come across a juvenile whale that was feeling a bit more into it and was breaching quite a few times. Maybe you wouldn’t immediately know it is a juvenile from the photos but it was with its mother and the size difference was obvious at the time. That said, who cares? It was really cool to watch.

If I Can Smell the Breath, They Must Be Close

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Humpback whales do not use Listerine. If you are upwind or one (or more), you will know it by the smell. When they exhale through the blowhole, a very aquatic aroma is shared. This isn’t the only way to spot them of course, they are a pretty large beast so not the hardest thing to find – particularly if it is a calm day like it was for us. We saw so many humpbacks that we passed most of them by. We did end up pretty close to some, though. These guys seemed totally uninterested in us. I have to say I took it hard.

Whale Watching Tour

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I have been on a few whale watching trips in the past. We took one out of Provincetown on Cape Cod that had a whale guarantee. No whales and you get a free second trip. 95% success rate. Guess what day we went on. No chance to go back and take the free trip. We did a trip in a RIB when staying on Pender Island and had more success on that occasion including a pretty close encounter with a humpback. Other than that it was a pretty quiet trip.

Consequently, I was cautious when we went on our trip out in Monterey Bay. This is an area with an abundance of marine life, particularly at this time of year. Dolphins, humpbacks, orcas and even blue whales have been about a lot recently. However, we went on a trip that had a lot better chances. It was an all day excursion. It was listed as eight hours but we ended up being gone for eleven. The map above shows where I took shots so you can see we went a long way up the coast. It is easy to see why they don’t let children under 13 or pregnant women on. Boredom or urgent needs are not realistic!

The day was very productive. Be ready for a stream of posts of aquatic wildlife!

Dolphins and Whales

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A sunny Sunday is a great time to go to the coast. We took a drive along the Pacific from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay. We had bought some food before leaving Santa Cruz so picked a spot along the way to stop and eat our lunch. Sitting and watching the ocean while eating is very tranquil. While we were there, I thought I saw someone swimming. Then I saw another one and realized that it was a group of dolphins making their way along the shore. No sooner had they gone but, coming the other way, I spotted a pair of whales, presumably a mother and calf. Neither the dolphins nor the whales were terribly conspicuous since they are almost always underwater and hard to get a shot of when they break surface before they disappear again but here is what I did get.

Ospreys on the Docks

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I might have been visiting Mare Island to see the museum and surrounding area but I also got to fit in some wildlife viewing while I was there. I had stepped out of the back of the museum towards one of the dry docks. One of the guys working in a business nearby starting chatting and saying how he wished he had a long lens with him to photograph the ospreys. I could hear a lot of noise but he pointed out the source. All of the high structures around the docks be they cranes or gantries seemed to have a nest on them. Ospreys were all over the place. They had access to the fishing in the water a short distance away so the metalwork was providing a great vantage point with plenty of privacy.

The noise from the nest close to me was pretty loud. A chick was obviously awaiting some food. At first I thought the parents were going to come right in but then I realized that there were so many nests that the birds I could see flying were not necessarily anything to do with this chick. I don’t know whether it had worked that out, though, given the noise it was making when any bird came close. I have no idea how much the nest impact the operation of the machinery and whether there are any restrictions on what can be done when they are in place but they are clearly all over the place.

Hawk Hunting

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On occasions you get lucky and something comes right to you. However, that is not always the way and sometimes you are just never quite in the right place. A Hawk was running along a ridge-line next to a drainage channel near me. I saw it first from a distance and figured it would be long gone by the time I got to the area. Apparently not. As I came alongside the ridge, it flew towards me before gentling drifting along the ridge in the direction I was traveling, i.e. away from me. As it got the end of the ridge it wheeled around to the other side. I figured it would soon repeat the process given the way the wind was blowing onto the ridge. Next time I would be perfectly placed for it to come towards me. I guess it never read the plan. I didn’t see it again. Therefore, the only shots I got were a little distant.

Mallards Getting Frisky

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This is the time of year when the wildlife starts to get a bit interested in mating. This can result in some battles between competing individuals but, while walking alongside a river, I saw a couple of mallard ducks behaving pretty strangely. One was male and one female so I think they may have been interested in each other but their behavior was sufficiently strange that I couldn’t be sure that was actually the case.

Initially they were splashing around in the water. They would seem to dive just below the surface and flap around down there making a lot of noise and moving quite randomly – not necessarily towards each other. It would stop for a while and then start again. Very odd behavior to the uninitiated. After this had gone on for a while, one of them took off followed by the other. They then appeared to wheel around the sky with a tail chase underway. This also went on for quite a while before they landed back where they had started and everything seemed to revert to normal. Anyone who knows what was going on, please let me know in the comments.

Egrets in Hayward

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The marsh areas along the shore of San Francisco Bay in Hayward are a popular spot for birds. Egrets are certainly a common bird in this area so seeing some of them while walking along the trails in the area was no surprise. I was interested to see how close you could get without disturbing them. The area is popular with people so they probably are relatively used to having people around. Even so, I did not want to cause them any disturbance. As it was, they seemed far more focused on whatever they were going to eat next than they were of me.

Shoveler Ducks

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Nothing too dramatic or unusual today. San Francisco Bay has a lot of birds that live on its shores and one species that I have seen a lot of recently is Shoveler Ducks. I thought that they deserved their own post so here are a few of the residents.