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| Surfbirds and Black Turnstones Foraging Together at Ocean Beach |
I've been thinking about changing the name of the blog for a while since I've been doing almost exclusively San Francisco nature photography these days. The blog was originally called John Wall's Natural California, back in 2007. Then in 2013 it became the Mt. Tam Journal (or maybe A Circumannuation of Mt. Tamalpais) which was to be a one-year photography project on Mt. Tam. I deleted all the posts back to the beginning at that time, and although I don't fully regret doing that, I won't be deleting anything with this change of name and focus.
I'll continue to put most of my energy into this San Francisco nature notebook, but I'll also continue to wander farther afield on occasion. When I came out with my self-published book Revealing the Landscape: Mt. Tamalpais, I had it in mind to do other "Revealing the Landscape" titles on different places, figuring Pt. Reyes would be my next project. There's nothing like delving deeply into a particular place. From there I would expand to more far-flung parts of California.
That could still happen, but what I've always wished for would be to find other photographers who would enjoy doing something similar by picking their own landscape and sharing their explorations. I'd love to have something like that happen with a sort-of photography club that would be a series of "Nature Where I Live" blogs from wherever folks happen to be.
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| Surfbird Exploring the Geologic Record |
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| In addition to the surbirds and black turnstones foraging just below the Cliff House, a handful of willets was foraging in the sand nearby. Just offshore, several surf scoters were diving for fish, often coming right up to the beach where they appeared be getting pummelled in the shorebreak, yet they always popped back up looking nonchalant about it. |
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| Red-tailed Hawk & Pine Cones (I saw this hawk swoop into the tree and stopped my bike to check it out. It hopped from branch to branch until it got to the other side of the tree, where it appeared to be looking for prey. At least, it didn't do any serious preening. I watched for a while to see if it would pounce on something but left when I started getting a stiff neck from looking straight up for too long.) |
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