3/10/2024 San Joaquin Marsh, Orange County, California
The tree swallows at this location are a part of an ongoing monitoring project by the local Audubon chapter and the water district that manages the land. The first nest boxes were installed in 1998, and now there are over 100 nest boxes. This project has almost singlehandedly recovered the population of tree swallows in Orange County--during the 1985-1990 Orange County breeding bird atlas project, there were 0 successful tree swallow nests. Now, anyone can go to places like this marsh and see hundreds of tree swallows actively nesting!
Today, I went to Gryphon's for the day and at one point he had me pinned to the bed with some pillows under me, his dick inside me, and was using his massage gun vibrator on me, and genuinely I don't think I've ever cum so fast or hard
It got to the point where I was trying to get away from the vibrator, and 😳
I'll be going camping/backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas 3 times in the next month! We're going to try to check out Mono Lake too... I'm super excited! Fingers crossed I'll finally see my ultimate nemesis, the yellow-headed blackbird... They've been my nemesis bird for like 2 years now :')
Expect to see photos from these trips in approximately 1-2 business years 💀 I am incredibly slow at editing and posting photos... sorry!!!
My name is Kes (he/him/his) and I am a birder, photographer, environmental educator, artist, etc. I'm in my mid-20s and I've been birding (and taking bird photos) for about 4 years! I live in California and a good number of my photos will be from there.
This blog is a space for me to post my own photos, reblog photos from folks here on tumblr, and occasionally post cool photos from iNaturalist. Most of my photos are of birds, but I take other wildlife and nature photos too. I also visit zoos relatively frequently, so you'll see my photos from those as well!
I am always learning and improving. If I make a mistake, please let me know! You're also welcome to submit your own photos, I love getting to see what y'all have around you! (Giving a general location is appreciated!)
Thanks for stopping by :)
Useful tags, copyright disclaimer, how you can use my photos, and FAQ below the cut.
Useful tags:
my photos -> photos that I took
personal faves -> a curated tag of my favorite photos I've taken (this tag is a WIP)
hall of fame -> posts that have reached 500+ notes
kestrel speaks -> photos with added commentary/information and non-photo posts
other people's photos -> photos I've posted that are not mine
Any photo that I post which does not have a photographer credited is my own photo! I always credit other people's photos and each post should have a link back to the iNaturalist observation. If anything looks incorrect, or I've posted one of your photos that you would like me to take down, please let me know!
For my own photos: You can consider them posted under the copyright license CC-BY-NC, which means that you are free to share them or adapt them, but you must do so with credit (a link back to my tumblr is fine) and without using them for commercial purposes. You are welcome to use them as art references as well. I would love to know if you use my photos for anything!
FAQ: (not actually frequently asked questions because most of these I've never been asked BUT putting them here in case anyone is curious!)
What camera do you use? I currently use a Nikon Coolpix P950. Before summer 2023, photos were taken using a Nikon D3000 with a 55-200mm lens.
What are the birds in your icon and header? My header: Clark's nutcracker in Inyo National Forest, California. My icon: western hooded pitta from Tracy Aviary in Colorado. Top of pinned post: American kestrel in Santa Cruz, California.
California Ground Squirrel Otospermophilus beecheyi
1/2/2024 Orange County, California
This leucistic ground squirrel is a part of a relatively isolated population of California ground squirrels in Dana Point, which has a high percentage of leucistic and partially leucistic individuals.
This little guy was so cute but so hard to photograph as it dove in and out of heavy surf! It was just a little black dot on the waves, and it would pop up for 2-5 seconds at a time before diving back down and disappearing. Very fun sighting, though!
@maip--macrothorax dared me to find a cackling goose, and... I definitely found at least one! (Around a hundred, in total!) While my partner and I were driving to another birding location, we drove past a snowy field of geese that we immediately clocked as cackling geese - they were just too small to be Canada geese. We found a spot to park and check them out, and sure enough, they were (almost entirely?) cackling geese!
I don't have a ton of practice telling cackling from Canada, but I know that one field mark is the steep forehead. When I was editing my photos, I noticed a good number of these geese have a more sloping forehead (and skinny neck and lighter breast) that remind me more of Canada geese. But none of these birds are any larger than the ones that are clearly cacklers.
I uploaded my photos to iNaturalist, and the folks there confirmed that they're all cacklers, so... I'm not sure if there's just more variation in these traits than I thought, or what's going on with those birds with more Canada traits. Also, for what it's worth, Merlin identified their vocalizations as cackling goose and never suggested Canada. If anyone here has any input, please do share! For now, I'm going to label these photos as cackling.
(Did I cheat on this dare by going to a different state where cacklers are more common?)
Thus ends my saga of actually posting pictures close to the time that I took them! Thank you all for tagging along through this journey. It was a huge motivator to edit my photos in a timely manner and get them queued here! Now back to your regularly scheduled very-out-of-date-and-order photos from wherever I left off, until I someday catch up! (Plus reblogs!)
