All My Blogs

I photographed these royal terns while visiting San Francisco.  Inset image is not mine. The thing about getting older is that you pay a price with your hair.  The first thing that happens is that you start to lose it, and what remains begins to turn grey.  It seems that royal terns, in a way, suffer from the same fate. Their breeding plumage renders them royal - orange beak, a slick black crown, and smooth feathers presenting gallantry and regality.  After breeding season is finished and they complete their fall moult, it seems they have aged rapidly.  Their bill turns yellow, almost jaundiced; the forehead loses those illustrious black feathers as if they are going bald, and their body plumage seems to have lost its softness, certainly compared to the above photos. If only we humans could resolve our hair issues this way.  My dad and I have both had significant hair loss, with mine being not as bad as my father's but still significant.  Wouldn't it b...

A long-billed curlew I photographed in San Francisco with a shrimp it just caught. I have to admit to a fascination with shorebirds.  And I was beyond ecstatic when, while walking along Golden Gate Beach, I came across a curlew hunting for food.  Now, I have seen other birds with long bills, such as spoonbills, pelicans, storks, and so on, but the curlew did something I did not at all expect. The long-billed birds I usually see feed by probing the water or substrate's surface.  Not this bird.  It walked along a muddy plane, its feet spread wide to keep it from sinking into the soft mire, and plunged its bill deep into the sediment.  Right up to its eyeballs.  Not an inch or two, all eight or so inches.  And it came up with a prize. Have a look at the three consecutive images below that I took.  You can see that the water is only superficially covering the soft mud.  The curlew plunges its bill deep under the surface, so deep, in fact, that it...

Sally Lightfoot crabs, also called the red-rock crabs, are not commonly eaten by humans. If you lift rocks up along the BC coast, you will likely find young Dungeness crabs scurrying away to find shelter.  On the Pacific Coast in Mexico, the crabs that are often seen are the Sally Lightfoot crabs.  Also called red-rock crabs, these decapods are inhabitants of rocky shorelines.  The juveniles, photographed above, are often difficult to see as they blend in well with the surfaces they inhabit.  As they grow older, they become a bright red colour and are found less frequently above the waterline.  Click here to see an adult. They are rarely eaten by man, but are frequently preyed upon by predators in nature.  One use of them is for bait in fishing.  The Sally Lightfoot crabs consume surface deposits of algae and phytoplankton.  They also consume a wide variety of invertebrates and will even take their own kind, especially when food is scarce. ...

A young lady gave me permission to photograph her while we strolled the beaches of Huatulco. If you like sandy beaches, warm sun, and good people, Huatulco is the place to go.  Not that I am a connoisseur of such things, but my short visit there was certainly inspiring. Pronounced wah-TOOL-koh , the town is located in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, along the Pacific coast, near the town of Santa Cruz.  Huatulco itself used to be a small fishing village, but its prime location and excellent beaches have been a magnet for tourists and the cruise ship industry.  We were there only for a day, half a day, actually, but we enjoyed strolling along the sandy coastline. The area around Huatulco has 9 bays and 36 beaches.  Some are close at hand, some require transportation to get to, and others can only be visited by boat.  Whatever your whims, there is a beach for you.  For more information, click here . Safety is important.  My research tells me that Huatulco i...

Photo of a giant red-winged grasshopper I took while visiting El Salvador We were visiting a Maya temple on one of our cruise excursions.  While everyone else followed the guide, I took photos with my camera of the structures and the animals I found.  As I approached the tour group, I saw a large flying something descend into the crowd.  I watched as the biggest grasshopper I ever saw landed on a woman's jacket.  Her scream was palpable.   In a mad panic, she flailed her arms in a desperate attempt to dislodge the creature.  It then flew off to a temple wall where it remained for some time.  I watched it with great interest - even though it was fairly far away, it could be clearly seen.   It then flew to a tree branch, high up in the canopy.  The above photo was taken at that point.  The actual image is inverted, as the insect was hanging upside down.  I think it looks better this way. It has a wingspan of almost 10 inches...

Two members of the shark family swimming along the shimmering, sandy ocean bottom. Hypanus americanus , the Bahamian stingray, is a common species in this part of the ocean.  Although not physically located in the Caribbean, the Bahamas are strongly associated with it.  I photographed these rays while visiting Half Moon Cay, one of the 700 islands making up the Bahamian archipelago. I love the marble-like streaks of light that cut through the image.  They are caused by the water's irregularly shaped surface that bends light, causing some areas to be brighter than average and other areas to be darker than average. Southern stingrays are not generally dangerous.  They are rather docile members of the Condrichthyes, the family that makes up the sharks, rays, skates and sawfish.  Their "bones" are made of cartilage and are not ossified into hard, calcified structures.  Stingrays do have a tail barb that they can use to defend themselves if they feel threatened....