A Day at the Beach

Or at least a couple of hours.  We got down a little after 8:30 AM.  It's warm and sticky out, but a touch of breeze helps a bit.  Trying to give the new camera a good field test today, so I have more pictures than usual. 

The sky was mostly overcast, with a short period of sun, that lasted long enough for the picture above.  At the fight, a Great Blue Heron was occupying the 'posing post' this morning.  I think the camera did a good job of getting the detail on the heron.

A female Spicebush Swallowtail butterfly caught in the act of puddling, more commonly an act of male butterflies.

 The camera did a good job on this Bald Eagle, caught mid flight.  I mostly use "sports" mode on the beach, because many of the shots are action, and it helps freeze the motion.  I'm not sure whether this photo was take at full (32 x) zoom or merely 16, but it's also cropped out of the original.  Still, pretty good detail.

 A decent fossil Mako Shark's tooth, shown as it was found.  Probably from a Cosmopolitodus hastalis, a relative or forefather of the Great White Shark

 The same tooth in my hand, for scale.

 Skye and Red enjoy a walk in the surf.

A family enjoys a visit to the new island (soon to gone as well, when the tide comes in)

Kind of sad.  This parrot was down on somebody's beach umbrella.  They didn't own the parrot and didn't know who it belonged to.  It clearly wanted to be around people, but wouldn't allow itself to get caught, so it's probably an escapee from locally.  I'll send this photo to some people with big local email list, and maybe someone will see it and come and get it. Or maybe it will just figure out how to get home on it's own.

 I did see a new butterfly today, some some kind of Sulphur.  I've seen a lot of this large yellow butterfly around, but they rarely alight, and when they do, they fold their wings, so all I get is the undersides like this. The couple of blotches sure look like the ones on the other web page.  It could be a Cloudless Sulphur (Phoebus sennae), but I'm not ready to commit to that yet.

I did get one "action" photo while in flight, with the wings spread, but there's not enough detail to make out much about it.  The flower they were visiting is Jewelweed (Impatiens capnesis).  This is related to the common horticultural Impatiens.  The native is common in wet, shady spots, like this one under the cliff.

Another family going out for a bit of jetty fishing.