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Our whale watching was in Puerto Lopez Mateos, a small fishing town
on the Pacific Coast. The bay area is a marine reserve. |
We went out in small fishing boats called panjas.
The local fishermen have a trade organization and take turns taking
tourists out on whale watching outings. |
The whales winter in the waters of Baja and have
their young. The area we watched the whales in was a secluded bay behind
a barrier island. Lots of my pictures are gray bump shots like this one. |
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Here's the money shot! |
Another good whale breach. |
Tail shots are good too. |
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Another good tail shot. |
I know this doesn't look like much, but this whale
surfaced and dove so close to our boat I could have almost reached out
and touched it. |
We took this picture while sea kayaking. These little
birds are called Oyster Crackers. |
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A white egret. (from sea kayak) |
This is a dried up trigger fish that we saw on the
beach while out sea kayaking. The beach was some times used by fishermen
to sort their catches. |
This is an Osprey (fish hawk) nest on a sea cliff.
The birds use all sorts of junk to build their nests. |
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A Magnificent Frigate Bird. These soaring sea birds have a
distinctive wing shape and a long tail that they sometimes hold open in
a V shape. |
Its only a sea gull, but he posed nicely on the bow
of our ship. The red spot on it's bill is a feeding / regurgitation
spot. The gull's young peck at it, and it triggers the gull to
regurgitate up a meal for them. (Yum) |
A Blue Heron. It was perched on a fishing boat
anchored next to our ship in Puerto Escondido. |
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A Brown Pelican. They are such big goofy birds, I love em. |
These little (1-4 inch) crabs are Sally Lightfoots.
They are very colorful and very fast. They hang out on rocks on the
water's edge in large groups, and instantly disappear en-mass if you get
too close. |
A mother mountain goat and two young. (one is rock
colored and hard to spot) We our driver spotted them from quite a
distance while we were driving to San Javier. |
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Vultures. They were all over the place in Baja. They looked great
when they were perched on a big cactus with their wings spread out
sunning themselves. These vultures were part of a group of almost a
dozen vultures that were feeding on some kind of carcass. |
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Camera footnote: My camera is a Nikon 6006,
and most of the wildlife shots were taken with my Tameron 90-300mm lens.
Close shots were taken with my Nikon 28-70mm lens.Some shots I zoomed in
on further when I scanned them. |