San Jack

May I suggest you click on a pic for a big flick?

I decided to take a mental health day yesterday, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which were my frenetic schedule of late, and of course the national nightmare. I hear that calls to suicide hotlines are up, up, up, strangely my thoughts at present are more homicidal in nature. I have been rather caustic and hostile and I thought it would be wise for all parties concerned if I took a day off.

Have read many Chinese classics of yore where the population was forced to live under an evil king.

In any case, I had talked to Ken earlier in the week about returning to the San Jacinto Wildlife Area. He invited Mike and Fred and we all piled into Ken's Rav4 early yesterday morning and were off.

Let us say that my timing was less than ideal. There was a paucity of long legged birds that I usually encounter there and we saw few of the cool species that I usually see at the sprawling reserve. To top it off we were tattooed by mosquitos, they set on us like thirsty vampires at a Red Cross blood drive.

Male kestrel

I managed to get some shots but nothing really special.

Still it was great to be out away from most of humanity at the 19 thousand acre preserve.

I identified a few birds for the fellows, rank amateur that I am and submitted to my new found vocation as human pincushion.

in situ

I had been there in November before, with good consequences but as my friend Larry Moskovitz mentioned later in the day on the phone, you have to wait until it gets colder, or be comfortable in your role as human mosquito sacrifice.

It was certainly a beautiful day the scalloped hills in the background gorgeous in their stark severity.

Red tailed hawks patrolled the middle sky, a few harriers glided over the marsh.

I rudely interrupted this pair of red tailed hawks an a high power pole.

We passed quite a few suv's of what looked to be serious bird photographers. All had beanbags in the windows and were sporting mammoth camouflaged lens that looked to be at least 600mm f4. I looked at my paltry Sigma 150-600mm with a case of serious lens envy, like Donald Trump with his small hands walking into Plato's Retreat.

Took a few more pics of what was around and scratched my ever growing welts. The pros had long sleeves and deet.

Always something to see out there, even on a slightly less than perfect day.

immature black crowned night heron

White faced ibis

I had a meeting to get back to so after a quick trip to the Walker Ponds and the Duck Clubs we headed back, stopping at 5 guys first for lunch.

I got back to town and found out that my meeting was cancelled. Entered into mental health day, phase two. Drove to Oceanside to pick up Kent to head down for the Aztecs basketball opener against USD.

But first a quick trip to the zoo. Lighting wasn't so good and I lacked motivation but needed to shoot more with the nikkor 70-200mm VR lens. So I did. Hard to have a bad day at the zoo and I needed the exercise.

River Otter

Meerkat

I have performed minimal adjustment on these zoo pictures. I shoot raw so you have to inherently process but I have tried to do nothing where possible. Very sharp lens.

Going to be a fine moon, Monday

We closed the zoo down and headed down to the game. Wished I had more time to spend taking pictures.
Called Viejas Arena and they said I couldn't shoot the basketball game, only point and shoots allowed. People can only take bad pictures.

Met some interesting people in the bar, Aztecs won, but it was not easy. Injured and small this year, lacking beef. Gonzaga with three seven footers next, scary.