The past couple of
weeks have seen the raven hiking in Mission Trails
Regional Park (MTRP) doing both a patrol, and a pleasure hike. The hikes were
lovely, but there were no particular photo ops due to the dormant nature of the
chaparral this time of year.
Two weeks ago we
went on a bird walk at Silverwood Preserve which is owned by Audubon Society.
It is located right in the chapparal and a lovely place to explore and look for birds. We
had a good time and saw about twenty different birds. The only one which was
photogenic was a pair of doves. The area was burned in 2003 during the Cedar
Fire, largest wildfire in California history, but true to the chaparral; it has
come back quite well. A number of the oaks have sprouted out with new growth.
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| Chaparral Country |
My three hiking
friends, Myrna, Chris, Caron, and I did a patrol in MTRP which was quite
venturesome and planned probably as a 10 mile hike. We studied the route and
revised it to 8 miles taking out a couple of truly gnarly hills which are hard
to do this time of
year as the ground is quite hard, and the loose gravel is very loose!
Thanksgiving morning we were off for a hike at Torrey Pines State Park. This is a preserve for the rare Torrey Pine which is only found here on the coast in San Diego, and on Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands off the coast of California. There were lots of people out doing the same thing but we found a less traveled path to the beach after hiking the Guy Fleming Trail. One of the sights was this blooming Shaw Agave.
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| Shaw Agave bloom |
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| Agave Bloom with Hummingbird |
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| Willet |
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| Cliff in Torrey Pines Park on Guy Fleming Trail |
This past Friday
we finally got to hike Sycamore Canyon. The week before we got rained out. The
canyon gets its name from the prolific amount of sycamore trees
that grow there. This was a quite flat hike with a destination or turnaround point
being Gooden Ranch. The ranch was the home of a furniture store owner in the Los
Angeles who made this his escape respite from the Los Angeles
area starting in
1938. We had some overcast and the place mostly to ourselves. As we set out early in
the morning we saw two coyotes, and several hawks. On our return trip
we had a few mountain bikers pass, but no other hikers.
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| Coyote Looking |
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| Yawning Coastal Oak |
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| Sycamore Color 1 |
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| Sycamore Color 2 |
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| Sycamore Canyon View |
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| Sycamore with Oaks |
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| Sycamore Wallpaper |
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| Shy Cottontail |
?Grey? Saturday,
the day after Black Friday: I took off in the morning to photograph the brown
pelicans that come to San Diego and hang out near La Jolla Cove. They are
getting their breeding plumage so can be quite photogenic in the right light. They
were posing nicely and a few gave me an opportunity to get them in flight. There
were few photographers there which was nice so the birds did not get spooked.
Soon there will be anywhere from 10 to 20 photographers there in the early
morning.
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| Western Gull |
|
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| What did you say? |
|
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| Western Gull |
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| Where is Flight Control? |
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| In Formation |
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| Landing Gear Down |
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| Cormorant Nest Building |
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| I thought I was cleared for Landing |
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| Follow the Leader |
During this time
we have also had some pretty good sunsets. I have not rushed off to the coast
for a real
opportunity, but here are some from three sunsets taken here in our
neighborhood.
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| Stormy Night |
Now it is time to get baking, etc. for the Holidays!!
