Tag: wildlife
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Monterey Bay Aquarium
Last weekend, J and I took a roadtrip north to Monterey and San Francisco. You can see all of the photos here. The main destination on Saturday was the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Housed in an old cannery, the Aquarium is now home to a huge collection of California’s native marine species, from fish and turtles…
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Earth Day 2013: Balboa blooms and birds
This is one of the first Earth Days in a while that I haven’t been working or volunteering at an event of some sort, which is a little weird. I hope I can get outside and enjoy the sunshine today at least. In the meantime, here are some photos I took in Balboa park last…
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Sunset Cliffs and California Wildflowers
Last week J and I spent an afternoon at Sunset Cliffs. Our friends had recently gotten portraits done there, and the photos were beautiful, so we decided to go exploring. Sunset Cliffs Natural Park is adjacent to Point Loma Nazarene University, and consists of meandering cliff-side trails, wide spans of open space, and a long…
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An Afternoon at Birch Aquarium
A couple of days ago I visited the Birch Aquarium with a friend. It was a very nice little aquarium with a focus on local (southern Californian) sealife. I learned a lot about local fish and a bit more about the tide pools (that I still need to re-visit). My favorite exhibits were of the octopus…
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Southwestern Wildlife Spotting: Volume 1
The following are some accounts of wildlife I’ve seen since moving to California. This isn’t an exhaustive list, mostly just of those animals I’ve photographed, but there are a few I’ve ID’ed with no photo (which makes me sad… but still happy I saw them). Not all of the photos are fantastic, but they “work”…
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Hiking in Blue Sky: aka The Lake is a Lie
Maybe instead I should say the lake was not what we expected. At any rate, the other day, J and I broke out my (until then) unused Hikes of Southern California book and picked one that was relatively close to home. It was in the eastern part of the county, at a place called Blue Sky…
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California Whale Watching: Gray whales, dolphins and sea lions
Last Thursday, J and I went whale watching off the coast, past Point Loma. It’s migration season for gray whales, coming up from Baja California and going back to Alaska and that region for the summer months. I’ve never seen gray whales, plus it was a chance to take a boat ride through the harbor…
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Painted Rock Petroglyphs
This will be a short post. On the way back from Casa Grande we made a short detour to a places called Painted Rock Petroglyphs, in the Painted Rock mountains. The glyphs are from a wide age range, some ancient, some from a few hundred years ago and some from the 19th century. They are on…
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Well, I SAID I wanted to see the Sonoran Desert.
So here’s the thing. I’ve been trying to go to as many national parks (or historic sites, as the case may be) this year as possible. I’m excited about my passport stampbook (as I’ve previously posted) and especially since we now live in the half of the country with all of the huge natural areas,…
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Seals and Sea Lions and Pelicans, oh my!
At the end of February, J and I went to the northern part of San Diego (to La Jolla) in search of the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) seals. It wasn’t exactly hard to find them. La Jolla has a lot to offer in the way of shopping and dining, and beautiful…
Joanna Volavka 