View allAll Photos Tagged haystackrock
Finally a sunset that wasn't ruined by the thick layer of fog/clouds that seems to live miles off shore here! I've been waiting all week for a night like this, and last night was it!
Good thing I snapped lots of shots, because my favorite layer of crap is back and killed any hopes of a repeat tonight =(
Still I can be thankful for being in a great place to grab some goodies last night, and this one isn't even an HDR! Believe that!!
So, my photo skills aren't good enough for what I had this morning which was "a lot of Tufted Puffins flying around the rock very quickly, not so many roosting where I could see them, most of them seeming to be landing on the ocean side of the rock. So I took a bajillion photos and made collages out of the more interesting ones.
Here are (clockwise from top left)
1) a pair of puffins flying away from the rock. The puffins did not seem to be particularly traveling together, but looking at the cumulative photos I got I think that there were a lot of "onesies" and "pairs" going around.
2) A pair of puffins roosting on the rock, near the top, who had good luck with the photo (relatively).
3) Gull photobombing a single puffin near the top of the rock. No worse interactions that I could see. The gulls and puffins were all flying around the rock quite happily (not interfering) as were some of the Pelagic Cormorants - which last I didn't get any keep-worthy photos this time.
4) Better photo of the single puffin near the top of the rock. This is the only photo I got that really shows those interesting ridges on the beak.
5) Two puffins - the lower on approach to a landing site on the other side of the rock (probably near the top :-) ). The upper was doing a fly-by, I didn't get any chance to guess if they were "together" or even going to the same place. This was after the tide started coming in and a fair number looked to be landing "for a while, perhaps".
A sad photo. My friend and I found this pile of dead birds on the beach, a block or two south of Haystack Rock, halfway between the low-water line (it was near low tide) and the top of the beach. Western Gulls are on the beach all the time and it is not hard to imagine a dog or (determined) cat preying on one - but this whole pile .... and some of them are Common Murres which as far as I know never walk on the beach but tend to either fly, swim or stand on high rocks... that I don't understand. My friend thought possibly "birdshot", I later thought "or maybe a person harassing birds with a drone. Or maybe a bald eagle - who could easily prey on these birds - but would they build a pile of prey on the middle of the beach? I don't know. I'm going to see if I can find out and if I need to send this photo to Anyone for Documentation of Something Not Good.
took a trip to the tide pools at Haystack Rock last weekend with some family in town. The weather turned out great
We should bow our heads for a moment of silence. Reports have come in that the Cape Kiwanda Keyhole has collapsed. Some of us our going down tomorrow evening to hold a candlelight vigil at the Keyhole. There are fond memories from here. If you would like to join us, we are meeting at Cape Kiwanda tomorrow evening at 6pm. Be sure to bring a candle.