Click To PlaySnowy Egret Chick on blip.tv

A snowy egret chick thinks real hard about the next branch, which he eventually jumped over to. Shot at Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, California.

Download: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Click To PlayEgret Family on blip.tv

Snowy Egret parents feed their chicks at the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, California.

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Click To PlayArmless Duck Wrestling on blip.tv

While I was at the duck pond to see the egrets I noticed these three ducks going at it in the parking lot. One is a Mallard and I guess the other two are some domestic variety.

Download: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Click To PlayJuvenile Black Crowned Night Herons on blip.tv

Juvenile Black Crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) in their nests at the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, California. Being brown, the chicks were hard to spot at first, but it was easy to tell they were there because of all the clucking. Here's a still image of them at Flickr.

Download: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Click To PlayCliff Swallow Nests on blip.tv

Cliff Swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) have built a number of nests at the Baylands Nature Preserve visitor center in Palo Alto, California.

Here's a still image of the nest on Flickr, and one of a baby who didn't make it.

Download: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Click To PlayBroken Legged Stilt on blip.tv

When I first saw this Black Necked Stilt he had one knee bent forward, one bent backward and moved around by hopping around gingerly on one leg.
This was taken at the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, California in the marsh along San Francisco Bay. Here's a photograph of the bird on Flickr.

Download: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Click To PlayStreaming in Ten Seconds on blip.tv

At the Lukens Lake trailhead water falls over a log and a new shoot grows next to a creek in a spot where snow has recently melted.

Download: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Taft Point In Ten Seconds on Vimeo
Download taftpoint.mp4 , 1.2mb

Looking down from Taft Point to the floor of the Yosemite Valley, 3200 ft. below.

Long Water on Vimeo
Download: longwater.mp4 ,1.8mb

Twenty three seconds of birds chirping and water dancing in the sun in the reflecting pool at the Pulgas Water Temple on Cañada Road in San Mateo County.

Beached on Vimeo (4:16 minutes)
Download: beached.mp4, 28.3MB

Elephant seals lounge on the beach at Point Reyes National Seashore in California. Music by subatomicglue.com. Photos by Jef Poskanzer and me.

Yesterday was quite the day for reptiles. On my hike at Windy Hill I saw ten lizards and five snakes! There were two rattlesnakes, one normal looking garter snake, one garter snake with a red stripe on its belly (which I think is rare and endangered) plus another big snake which I mistook for a rattler at first but wound up not having rattles.

The most exciting, though was the show by these two rattlesnakes. Luckily I happened to notice them when I was 20 feet away and not as I was passing next to them. At first all I saw were two heads sticking out of the grass, swaying like they were in a snake charming act. Then they started wrestling and tumbled down on to the trail where I could see them better. They were twined around each other and it looked like arm wrestling except the arms weren't attached to anything. Apparently its pretty rare to catch this behavior on video.

I stuck around for 20 or 30 minutes watching them partly because it was so interesting and partly because they were blocking my way. They never moved more than a few feet from the trail though so I finally turned around and took a different route.



Video: Rattlesnakes, 2 minutes
Download: Rattlesnakes.mp4, 32 MB