2006 Camp Update
By Caroline Armon
February 5th, 2006
We at Camp Cortez have had quite a variety of interesting guests this week! Mike and Mindy, professional photographers from the San Diego area brought some great karma, and thus, we had some fantastic whale encounters and they were able to take some AMAZING photos! One particular cow calf pair seemed to really take to Mindy. We found them a couple different times during the week at different places in the lagoon. Later in the week, a large calf was intent on receiving massages from Carol, Carl, and me. Shortly afterwards, we observed one whale breaching, while off to the left, another whale spy-hopped in apparent observation of his friend.
Though we received plenty of whale attention, we decided to take advantage of the high tide to ride into the mangroves and observe the bird life. Along with the usual array of double-crested cormorants, brown pelicans, and Brandt’s geese, we also observed a number of white ibis, both yellow and black-crowned night herons, great blue herons, tri-colored herons, snowy and great egrets, short-bellied dowitchers, whimbrels, long-billed curlews, and a belted kingfisher among many others.
All of our guests this week have had a variety of incredible whale encounters which were followed by many rousing and interesting discussions around the breakfast table on topics stretching from ocean reasources and wetlands to politics and religion.
We are seeing many more single male and female grey whales chasing each other around the lagoon. Finally, while I have noticed marked growth in the young calves over the past couple weeks, we have also seen quite a few calves that seem to be quite new to the world. What an interesting and exciting week!!
Caroline Armon
Logs & Diaries -- Guest Comments -- Field Reports -- Gray Whale Census
