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| Abbotts Lagoon Sunrise |
After all those windy days I was eager to get out to the dunes around Abbotts Lagoon to see if I could find any of the Pt. Reyes Wallflowers (Erysimum concinnum) that I photographed back in March 2010. I'd checked my Windy app and saw that it wasn't going to be dead calm, which was unfortunate. But I was still disappointed when I arrived at the parking lot and heard the wind howling just a little bit in the pre-dawn darkness.
As it turned out, I need not have concerned myself about the wind since there weren't any wildflowers to photograph anyway. The bright spot of my morning turned out to be watching a family of river otters swim by as they moved from the seaward part of the lagoon to the inland part. They spooked a great blue heron into flight as it was hunting near the bridge. The heron had not spooked earlier when I crossed the bridge, but a GBH does not mess around with a family of voracious otters.
The freshly wind-scoured sand dunes already had several sets of animal tracks crossing here and there. One disturbance looked like it might have been made by a bird landing and sweeping the sand with its wings, as if it had been going after prey. Nearby was a tiny dead mole lying on top of the sand. I wondered why it hadn't been eaten.
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| Point Reyes Wallflower on a calm morning at Abbotts Lagoon in March 2010. |
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| The otters swam underwater as they approached and passed beneath the bridge, but finally showed themselves at least briefly. |
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| I hoped they would get out on the dunes and play, but they did not. There are five otters in this shot. |
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| Moocows in the Morning |
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| Composite shot of a flicker that took off from its coyote brush perch. |
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| Lots of spotted towhees were belting out their sunrise songs. |
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