Wave Skimmers (California Brown Pelicans)

My photograph titled ​Wave Skimmers (California Brown Pelicans)​ was selected for inclusion in Movement: A Moment in Time,​ a national photography exhibition.  It will be on display Friday, January 17​th through Saturday, February 22​nd, 2025​. The ​First Friday reception​ is from 5:00-7:30pm ​at the Santa Cruz Art League located at 526 Broadway in Santa Cruz, California​. 

The vantage point for this is the Guy Fleming Trail at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve in La Jolla, California.

Robin Street-Morris. Wave Skimmers (California Brown Pelicans). Digital photograph.

Harvest Moon views with partial lunar eclipse

I captured a few photographs I like of last night's harvest moonrise and partial lunar eclipse. It was hazy over the mountains with some clouds here in San Diego. The atmospheric shot with the backlit sage is my favorite.

harvest moonrise over the mountains

harvest moon with last season's sage inflorescences 

harvest moonrise with eclipse and kitchen reflections

partial lunar eclipse

partial lunar eclipse with city lights

Solar Eclipse 2024

I watched the weather forecast get worse as the big day drew closer. I cleaned my lenses the night before anyway and attempted to calmly sip a coffee in Bee Cave, Texas that morning knowing we’d either get our moment or we wouldn’t. We did. The frustrating yet beautiful racing cloud cover obscured some of the phenomena I’d have liked to experience and capture, but there was a parting during totality and for that I am so grateful.

Totality with prominences

A brief visit to California's Central Coast

Risso’s dolphins (Grampus griseus) cruising

possible mating behavior in this Risso’s pod

monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) congregating on eucalyptus at Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove

black-footed albatross (Phoebastria nigripes)

three southbound gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus)

southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis)

Menzies' wallflower (Erysimum menziesii)

Debbie Downers are exhausting, yet I can't help but express dismay at the level of trampling by humans and their dogs in sensitive areas that are clearly marked with signs asking us to stick to the trails.  I'd never seen it this bad at Asilomar in years past.  Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve at home has become a free-for-all as well with rock formations cracked by our hooves and the flowers of threatened species that need to sow their seeds thrown to the sides of the trails. Plant blindness is a thing and one that’s detrimental to our own survival as a species.

Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) grove at sunset

The next six photographs document a predation event by a Steller sea lion on a bat ray.

This was another Steller sighting of a young bull in the company of California sea lions and cormorants near Moss Landing.

Note the massive difference in size between the California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) and the juvenile Steller male (Myliobatis californica) at right.