It's A Penguin Or A Duck, Nope It's A Common Murre

( From: http://www.coastalatlas.net)

There is this big white rock North of the Sea Lion Caves between Florence and Yachats, Oregon. It looks like it has been painted but it is hundreds, if not thousands of years of bird guano that makes it white. This Summer when we stopped and looked down at the rock it was covered with...Penguins?

Ok, they are not long neck Penguins, and in the water they looked like ducks. What are these things. Well, they were the Common Murre, an abundant penguin-like bird that spends the entire winter at sea but come to ancestral nesting grounds in the Summer.

The Rock is inhabited by breeding pairs from mid-May to August.

"The Common Murre or Common Guillemot (Uria aalge) is a large auk. It is also known as the Thin-billed Murre in North America. It has a circumpolar distribution, occurring in low-Arctic and boreal waters in the North-Atlantic and North Pacific. It spends most of its time at sea, only coming to land to breed on rocky cliff shores or islands.

Common Murres have fast direct flight but are not very agile. They are more manoeuvrable underwater, typically diving to depths of 30–60 m (100–200 ft), and depths of up to 180 m (600 ft) have been recorded.

Common Murres breed in colonies at high densities, nesting pairs may be in bodily contact with their neighbours.' ----Wikipedia

The Murre colony taken from a pull-out on Highway One, the Coast Highway.

Tidal Pools and Seals at Strawberryhill, Oregon

There were many extraordinary places along the Oregon coast.
Every one of them offered something special and different from the other.
To do each justice would take a lifetime of exploration.


This just a few pictures of such a place, the Strawberry Hill Tidal Pools.





It is a steep climb down the cliff to the pools, and the surface around the pools is very rough but if you take a walking stick to prop yurself up and wear non-slip shoes or boots you should be OK.

One of the rewards you will receive when you do, is the harbor seals lounging on the outer rocks.


With a good telephoto you can be right there with them. It is however illegal to actually go where they are.



But on occasion they will come to visit you.




This pool is one of the few places I saw full grown active star fish.



There are five adult star fish in this photograph. Clink on it and see if you can find them all in the enlarged version.



Now these two guys look a little bloated. They should be, they each seem to have a meal in their "stomachs" digesting it. Take a look at this site to understand how a star fish eats its prey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish


There were several varieties of the Sea Anemone in the pools as well. This guy was out of the water. Note the barnacles and razor clams on the rocks as well.



These next two guys were under the surface and swaying in the waves.



And yes, I did fall in , and I did get splashed on by the waves, and yes I did get wet.
Yes, I was exhausted, and my knees hurt like hell by the time I climbed back up and I would do it again in a second.



Away from the tidal pools, near the high tide splash zone, we found a rock pool about 18 inches wide that was teaming with life. if you enlarge this and look carefully you can see hundreds of animals.




After several dozen tries to get a close up of theses critters I finally got this one shot of some unidentified dude who in real life is about a 1/16th of an inch long or smaller. Anyone know who he is?

Rogue River Oregon Eagles

Serendipity!
That's what makes a photographer happy.
Yes, it is good to have a good camera, with a charged battery and large capacity for high quality photographs. But planned photographs can give you only so much satisfaction.
Serendipity gives you the extra.

While traveling East along the shore of the Rouge River of Southwestern Oregon, I looked up at the right time from the right place and caught a glimpse of an eagle's nest. So I stopped and moved until there was just the right angle for a clean photo of it.

The serendipity wasn't finding the eagle's nest but that a parent bald eagle was returning to the nest and thus arousing its lone inhabitant from his slumber.

So hearing his parent's cries as it approached the nest, the young eagle climbed up to its edge as daddy or momma, which ever the case was, landed.

Then the young eagle imitated his parents wing actions several times.

Yes, I took dozens of photos, and stayed as long as I could. I was just out of range of my camera's ability to get good details an my ability to hold it steady, but I was extraordinarily please to have had the experience anyway.