This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
A female kestrel sits on a fence post after finishing a meal.
I was out at Point Reyes yesterday. It was a slow day for me. I saw some bull elk and I saw lots of kestrels. This little female posed for me near the end of the day.
There was a photo in the news several months ago about a blue-eyed coyote at Point Reyes. The photo was taken by my friend, Daniel Dietrich who runs Point Reyes Safaris, or one of his clients. I look for it when I’m out there.
Just for the fun of it, a few days days ago I modified a photo of a coyote I photographed recently by giving it blue eyes. See my post a few days ago.
I think I’ve seen “Blue Eyes” once or twice, but I never made a positive ID because I never got a close enough view of it. As luck would have it, recently I did. See the photos below. The first image was taken at relatively close range. The second photo is just a crop of the first image. It seems to have some damage to its left eye.
In the third photo the coyote was a bit farther away and it becomes harder at that distance to tell for sure if the eyes are blue.
Looking back at the blue-eyed coyote that I created in Photoshop a few days ago, I have to say that without having the real one as a reference, I came pretty close to the blue eyes of the real blue-eyed coyote.
There is some discussion of blue-eyed coyotes on the internet.
I hope you’ve read this far because this whole discussion of the coyote’s eyes made me realize something I never realized before. I think I’m right about this because I just went through all the bird and mammal eyes on my website and the human eye is totally different from the eyes of all those birds and animals. I didn’t find any bird or mammal with any part of the visible eye that was white. They were all either all black or they had black pupils inside irises that covered all of the rest of the visible portion of the eye. Our irises are tiny in comparison to theirs and most of the visible portion of our eyes are white. Why is that? So, I googled it. Here’s one explanation: “Only humans obviously show the whites of their eyes, making it easier to communicate and deceive at a glance”. For more click here.
Blue-eyed Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore
Apparent Injury to Left Eye
It’s difficult to see blue eyes at normal viewing distance.
Coyote Crossing Ranch Pasture
Here’s a coyote crossing a ranch pasture in Point Reyes National Seashore. I took one out-of-the-ordinary step in my workflow. What did I do?
Back in late 2007 a photographer by the name of Jim Goldstein invited other photographers to do blogs showing their 10 best photographs of that year and to send him a link to their blogs which he would then add to a list of the blogs of all who were participating. It was a great service to all who appreciated good photography. It gave me a handy list of photographers (mostly nature photographers) so I could easily look at what they were doing and how my work compared to theirs. I participated a couple of times, but somehow forgot about it. I saw a notice about it recently and decided to participate again.
2018 for me was highlighted by a trip to Tanzania hosted by the African Wildlife Foundation (Craig Sholley) and Nature’s Best Photography (Jeff Vanuga). They hired Thomson Safaris to deliver all the necessary services such as camps, food, drivers etc. All three were superb. I also made my regular trips to Point Reyes National Seashore, which is a short drive from my home.
Jim Goldstein used to ask that you list your 10 “best” photos. The limit of 10 was not strictly followed by most and Jim seems to have de-emphasized it nowadays. Picking what you think are your “best” photos is not easy. So, below is a list of “some” of my “favorite” photos of 2018 in no particular order.
Finally, Jim’s list of links won’t be out until about the second week in January and when it comes out I’ll insert a link here. here it is: https://www.jmg-galleries.com/blog/2019/01/08/photos-2018-jmggalleries-blog-readers/
For now, you can go to his blog touting the 2018 round and linking to all the previous rounds all the way back to 2007 by clicking here. Thanks Jim!
Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore
Leopard, Serengeti National Park
Bobcat with Damaged Eye, Point Reyes National Seashore
Wildebeest Crossing Mara River, Serengeti National Park
Two Cheetahs Rest, Serengeti National Park
Mother Elephants and Calves, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania
Bobcat, Point Reyes National Seashore
Bobcat, Point Reyes National Seashore
Male African Lion, Serengeti National Park
Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore
Elephants, Tarangire National Park
Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore
Male Lion, Serengeti National Park
Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore
Badger, Point Reyes National Seashore
Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore
A coyote moves through a silage field on a dairy farm in Point Reyes National Seashore.
The Park Service allows silage growing on national park lands at Point Reyes. Not only that, but the Park Service allows beef ranchers and dairy farmers to live on the park lands year round, with their cattle, at discounted rents.
Silage mowing is a bit like hay mowing, except while hay is mowed when dry in the summer, silage is mowed when green in the spring. That’s when ground-nesting and near-ground nesting birds such as northern harriers, mallards, and various sparrow species are nesting in the silage fields. Mowing kills the nestlings and some adults. Ravens have learned to follow the mowers. They get all the injured and dead birds and rodents they can eat.
Neither the Park Service nor the dairies/ranches seem to care about the carnage even though killing the birds would appear to violate the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
A Superb Starling
The European starling that we have here in the United States is not at the top of my birds list, but I do love the look of the superb starling. Well named. I saw this bird many times in Tanzania.
Leopard, Serengeti National Park
We saw this leopard lying under the palm tree two days in a row. We wondered if it was a female with newborn cubs. When we stopped on the third day, the leopard was gone and the palm tree trunk was lying in her place. Hopefully, the leopard wasn’t hit by the tree as it fell and any cubs survived uninjured. For a larger view click to go to my portfolio.
