Favoritos de g_heaton

Was resting on the shoulder of the road amongst some weedy vegetation. Had just emerged from the holes under the rocky boulders of the canyon wall just off to the side of the road. I only saw it because of the shine in the headlights and the head which was lifted up. Didn't bite until near the end of my time photographing it. Three nights in the Chiricahuas, with the first being too wet and the third being not humid enough. The second day, the day I found this snake, was warm and humid with dry ground, the perfect Green Rat weather. I was really hoping to get lucky enough to see one of these beautiful and elusive snakes and was super excited when it actually happened. This is by far one of the coolest creatures I have ever seen in the wild and I am so fortunate to have seen this species in the wild on my second attempt!

My first desert tortoise and something that I was not expecting at all! It was a younger individual, only about 7-8 inches in length. There was a monsoon storm raging several miles away and it had rained in the area just a few days prior.

Found by another group of field herpers who were kind enough to let me photograph it. It was originally seen crossing the road from a rocky hillside about 2-3 minutes before the time stamp shown. It was huge, both in length and width, and was probably a gravid female. The cloud remnants of tropical storm Eugene were overhead during the observation.

Wow. First picked up this bird more or less in the dark at about 6:15 swimming directly below me just off the south edge of the pier. Was unsure of ID for a few minutes thanks to the birds fairly tattered appearance, poor top down view, and lack of light. As the minutes wore on typical features for this species became apparent such as the gray mantle and back, scalloped gray flanks, distinctive dark collar and mask, and pale bill became apparent. I was able to alert the listserv at about 6:30. I watched the bird for some time as it swam around the pier. It preened, sometimes flapped it's wings, and also dived on occasion (a very cool thing to see from a top down perspective). I watched the bird slowly drift out to the south to a distance of a couple hundred feet before slowly floating back towards the end of the pier. The first other birders to arrive were Loren Wright and Cynthia Case, who showed up at about 7:25. They just got on the bird as it dove and rather unfortunately went after a baited hook that one of the fisherman had let down. The fisherman pulled the bird out of the water and I rushed over to help remove the hook. We could see that the hook was stuck into the top third of the upper mandible, but thankfully not that far, not even making it to the barb. We were able to remove it more or less without incident. It was only after this scramble that I had realized I suddenly ended up with an Ancient Murrelet in my hands. Certainly not something I could have predicted when I woke up in the morning... Thankfully the bird seemed to be in good condition as it was squawking and struggling to get free. After a bit of debate of what to do next (and a few quick pictures) we decided to just release the bird further down the pier away from the fisherman as to hopefully avoid a repeat incident. We released it off the side of the pier thinking it was going to book it and get as far away from us as possible. To our surprise the bird decided to just sit and preen for a little while. It eventually dove a couple of times and began to swim and forage as if nothing had happened. As more people began to show up the bird began to swim towards shore just north of the pier. We watched it swim within just feet of some surfers and swimmers seemingly without a care. As the bird went into the surf the group that had gathered relocated to the sandy beach to get closer eye-level views of it. My photography instincts kicked in and I waded out into the surf and was able to get some pretty stunning views as it dove and foraged around within 10-15 feet of me at times. After a little while of foraging in the surf the bird then began to float back out towards the end of the pier, so the group relocated once more. While watching it back up on the pier we watched it go down for a particularly long dive and come back up with a fish probably at least half it's body length. Although we were all a bit skeptical he managed to get it down and continued foraging. The bird eventually floated out beyond the pier where it eventually grew quite distant. We left about 9AM, with our final views of this spectacular individual a couple hundred yards out off the end of the pier looking into the sun. So great to get such "soul satisfying" views of such a rare (especially seasonally and this close to shore) bird.

@g_heaton This is from the subpopulation you found. Since they fenced the area off, ones like this have been popping up towards the margins, of the former trail and along the ledge, presumably because now nobody's stepping on them anymore