It's almost June, and I haven't posted since March. I've moved back to Petaluma. I've been photographing the Farmers Market and Luchessi Park. I've been getting my new apartment in order. I've been struggling with the fallout of Trump's economy. I've been going to protest marches. I've been baking my own bread. I've been gearing up for a series of surgeries. All of them are probably post-worthy, but all of them have been keeping me distracted enough not to post.
Yesterday I knew I had to get out for a while and take a breather. I headed down to Shollenberger Park (which is literally down the street) for a walk around the wetlands. It became a day of interesting challenges for me, none of which were terribly earth-shattering, but definitely annoying.
The plan was to just walk... to put in steps. To be someplace that was natural and refreshing instead of a busy street or plaza (I've been walking more to the stores instead of driving these days, despite the poor condition of my ankle, which is pretty painful at times) I purposefully decided to leave my cameras home, to not carry anything heavy (including water) and walk at a time in the morning that should be pretty comfortable.
It was hot. There is no shade at Shollenberger. I was quickly worried about sunburn. I might have continued anyway, except for the flock of white pelicans. Having lived a great deal of my later years in areas with plenty of Brown Pelican, White Pelicans still capture my attention and give me a tiny jolt of wonder and joy. I had to photograph them. I pulled out my camera and captured this:
It is, as you can see, an amazingly crappy photo, but at least you can identify the animals as White Pelicans rather than the swans (which are in the background)
After a few moments of indecision, I decided to head home to get my cameras.
Once home, I discovered my step counter had registered zero steps. Annoyance #2. I updated my aps, then put on my fitbit, and tried to sync everything up, and... well, that's a whole other adventure. Ended up deleting the aps except for fitbit and going from there. When I returned to Shollenberger, btw, I found that the earlier walk would have registered at 1.2 miles.
Anyway, fitbit... walk the dog... pack... change my clothes because now it was HOT and the sun was beating down, close to noon, and I decided I WAS going to walk all the way around the loop even carrying a lot of stuff, in the heat.
The trip did not disappoint.
First, here are the pelicans taken with my Canon camera:
One of the fun things about walking the outer loop at Shollenberger is getting to the overlook on the Petaluma River. There were swallows rushing along the shore here and under the pilings, collecting mud and building nests. Then I noticed one of the riverboats coming up-river, toward what I assumed was a dock, but then noticed it was an old barge afloat apparently unattended toward town. The boat approached the barge and began to push it away from town.
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| if you look carefully you will notice the swallows, which look like black marks on the lens or in the water. |
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| pushing the barge |
Of course I got a lot of photos of birds and wildlife (totally missed a couple good fence lizard shots, including one that'd lost it's tail)
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| yeah, well, he was sitting motionless until I got out my camera! I was lucky to get this. |
Finally I reached the end of the loop:
But I think my very favorite photos of the day came after this, just before the edge of the parking lot, where there are two areas of water on either side. On one side, where I'd previously photographed the bittern, I saw a lot of movement in the water. When I first arrived, the sun was hitting the water in a way that made it pretty opaque. Now, however, I could see that the whole shallow area was filled with young animals, mostly some sort of tadpole.
While I was looking through my camera settings, trying to get a clearer photo, I caught movement in the sky out of the corner of my eye, and a bird landed in the tree above them. I immediately turned my camera to the tree, trying to get a good shot, but all I could see was the partial silhouette of a bird with a long beak. The smaller size had me thinking it was something like a kingfisher, but the only indigenous kingfisher I could find info on was the Belted Kingfisher, and I doubted I could have missed the white collar of that species, even with the poor sighting. It then flew across the path to the tree above the water on the other side. I turned my camera, and missed the shot as it fluttered through the leaves then down into the reeds along the water. Definitely no band, definitely not how kingfishers hunt.
Then I saw a sudden STRIKE out of the reeds. AMBUSH PREDITOR! and after that, I was ready with my camera to capture this little Green Heron:
Those became my favorite photos of the day.
So in the end: 10,000 steps, great photos, interesting views.
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