Here are a couple test videos from a new video camera to replace one that died.

The first clip is of the northern harrier flying over the More Mesa cliffs, a little while ago. The second is of the remarkable number of pelicans at Goleta Slough mouth, plus a single black skimmer. (A monopod was used for the pelicans; a tripod is needed. The More Mesa clip was hand-held.)

More Mesa and the slough mouth are part of the Goleta Slough system. Starting January 5, CCBER will be holding a series of lectures on Goleta Slough - single hour lectures every Monday evening from 6-7pm. The lectures look really good.

It took a while to get the video editing of the MOD format ducks in a row. I also found out how to embed video in a post. With the Sky3c theme, the embed code always disappeared — maybe I need to update Wordpress some time. The handy plugin that made it work can be found here:

http://www.matteoionescu.com/wordpress/embed-html/

On a UCSB lagoon bird survey, large numbers of egrets and other birds were seen according to Lisa Stratton, one of the surveyors. She suggested I take my camera out to the lagoon, which I did on Sunday (and saw another local Flickr photographer while there). Even though I was there reasonably early, I did not see large numbers of egrets. But, there were many pelicans and most entertaining of all, over a dozen Forster’s tern. They are very fast and small, and difficult to capture because auto-focus on the camera goes a little nuts on the birds in flight and they are tough to track. However, a few images were captured when the terns were at a distance (stable focus), before or after fishing in the water. At times they looked like large butterflies flitting around on the other side of the lagoon.

(UCSB Lagoon - Tern - December 22, 2008)

(UCSB Lagoon - Egrets - December 22, 2008)

(UCSB Lagoon - Brown Pelican - December 22, 2008)

A number of other bird species were seen and photographed. The grebes (western, eared and pied-billed) were too far away or against the sun for decent pictures. I had a close encounter with a song sparrow, and came across a female belted kingfisher.

(UCSB Lagoon - Song Sparrow - December 22, 2008)

It was also a chance to see how the restoration projects were going. There is a great deal of ice plant to remove, which is being done by “burning” with heat and suffocation. It appears as though a different, re-usable type of black covering is being used.

A good number of the planted oaks were doing well, some even better than the one photographed below. These were planted in 2005 according to the CCBER newsletter “Acorns were collected in September and planted after the early rains in November and December at 1000 sites.” See http://ccber.lifesci.ucsb.edu/newsletter/CCBERVolume1/vol001_ecologicalres_2.html. In possibly ten years, there will be a very young oak woodland in the area, instead of eucalyptus - although the latter does provide shelter and perching to pelicans, egrets and cormorants, but mostly by dead trunks and branches.

There was a lot of bird activity, especially around the dune restoration areas. I had only ever seen blue-gray gnatcatchers on coyote bush; here I saw them on beach evening primrose growing on the dunes. I need to return later this season to photograph birds I missed and along the shore and add them to this “documentary” slideshow.

(UCSB Lagoon - Restoration area - December 22, 2008)

(UCSB Lagoon - One of many interpretative signs - December 22, 2008)

Slideshow

• UCSB Winter 2008

A report from Santa Barbara County Birding: “There were 3 Northern Harriers on More Mesa around sunset this evening: one male and two females.”

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sbcobirding/message/12159

I thought it was unusual to have males this far south. Possibly, foraging for the 3 birds extends to all limits of More Mesa, as by the one I saw flying over the beach the other day. This is just to document this interesting number.

(More Mesa - November 4, 2006)

I took a walk this evening on More Mesa. I have not walked there very often this year, unlike most years when visits were more frequent. It is a handy, close area to visit, and a place today to enjoy the anticipation of the rain due tomorrow. More Mesa is one of the best places locally to view the interface between land, mountain and sea. In the winter it is green, with splendid sunsets made more colorful by rain clouds - a rarity in summer. In summer, More Mesa has a unique energy with flowering plants, butterflies, birds (many baby) and bright sunshine.

(More Mesa, looking toward Santa Ynez Mts - December 14, 2008)

I did not take my bird lens this time - just the 28-300mm lens. But, I did see a few interesting birds. Two white-tailed kites were seen in the more southern part of the usual central north-south swath of WTK territory - so possibly there will be nesting kites in central More Mesa this spring. I saw kestrels in two places, one along the eastern edge, and the other in the southwestern area. Perched in coyote brush close to the cliffs, was a loggerhead shrike. But the most surprising was a harrier, which flew over the beach area of More Mesa a number of times. It took me by complete surprise, as I was faced toward the ocean, to see a bird fly from my right over the cliffs and above the beach. I immediately recognized it from the white band on the tail. Do they normally hunt along the beach? There were many birds along the shore, especially sanderlings.

(More Mesa - December 14, 2008)

Located where it is, with the view it affords of the mountains and channel islands, and the abundant wildlife in an urban area, More Mesa is a very special place. I remember Rick Halsey, while attending a Jepson Herbarium course at Sedgwick in 2003, making the comment that after traveling over Chumash Highway (old name: San Marcos Pass) toward Santa Barbara, the largest patch of green, undeveloped land seen, is More Mesa. It is an area that also allows good distance walking along the many paths, with fresh air often cooled by marine fog. I hope it is preserved in perpetuity. A handbook about More Mesa is slated for publishing soon - for more details please see More Mesa link below.

(More Mesa, view toward UCSB - December 14, 2008)

Slideshow - click on link below to display slideshow.

• More Mesa Winter 2008

Other links

• More Mesa Preservation Coalition
• Jepson Herbarium Classes
  

For anyone who may be interested, this is the tale of what was encountered in tagging raw photos taken with Canon cameras (5D and 20D) with GPS coordinates. The GPS recording device is in the photo below - it is small enough to place in a pocket or backpack (which I did on my day of four small walks, December 07). On the right-hand side of the photo is an open flap, shown with USB cable attached.

The flap has to be lifted to connect the device to a computer with a USB cable. To the computer (Windows OS) , the device looks just like an external drive. A folder containing log files, created each time the device is turned on, is on the GPS drive These files have an extension of .log. The software provided with the device only tags .jpg files. I wanted to tag the raw .cr2 files produced by Canon cameras, so I did a little research and discovered the steps below. There may be better ways (information always welcome), but for now this works well - especially  as the unit is reasonably priced.

(…read more…)