Lorikeets! From the Santa Barbara Zoo. I'm not sure how much Horus these have, though.
As we were walking along the beach at Ellwood, we came across this: cable sticking right out of the beach. This was right along the waterline at low tide, so at high tide it would be submerged. This cable went WAY down deep into the sand, no idea how far or where it was going but it appeared to be heading directly out to sea. It appeared to be coaxial, like you'd use for cable TV. We actually encountered this twice along the walk.
This is from Coal Oil Point, looking toward Ellwood Beach. You can see in the distance that segment of abandoned, demolished pier that is visible in the other Ellwood pictures.
On my way back from the beach, there's a house with this very large spider in the front yard. By the time I get to the spider, the sun's just gone down. When I try to photograph it, I'm torn between getting close and getting a good picture, and keeping my distance so that it doesn't get any funny ideas, like jumping on me.
From CNN:
"HOBART, Tasmania -- Scientists in Australia are investigating what may be a new species of giant squid, after one of the deep sea creatures washed up on a Tasmanian beach over the weekend. "
Ellwood Beach, July 14, 2002. Unfortunately the sun overexposed many of my other pictures from this trip. The result looks more like "nuclear explosion" than "sunset."
These capybaras (world's largest rodents, as far as I know) are napping in the shade at the Santa Barbara Zoo.
This is one of my favorites. I caught these pelicans flying overhead at the Santa Barbara breakwater.
This turtle at the Santa Barbara Zoo did not mind me taking a few pictures while he was eating.
Here are three things you have probably never seen together in a photo before. A giraffe, a tractor, and the Pacific Ocean.
These were taken at low tide, west of UCSB: a jellyfish and a sea slug stranded on the beach.
These two pictures were taken from Highway 1, just north of Malibu.
Just before I took this, a fisherman had thrown this pelican a rather large fish. The pelican immediately gobbled it down, but the fish got caught the wrong way in his beak and there were a few minutes of uncomfortable "glug glug glug" noises before the fish finally was swallowed whole. Right after I took the picture, some idiot couple came out of nowhere with an enormous dog and scared the pelican away.
"Oh no, that lady is going to be eaten by a giant fish! Look out, lady!"
Welcome to Home by the Sea: If Thooms Had Cameras. I think the title says it all. I'll be posting fairly low-resolution images, with a lot of compression, to keep the bandwidth and storage space under control. The originals look much better.
Thoom!