My Local Escape

Over the past few weeks since I got back from Santa Fe, I have been way too busy and stressed out with work (such a dirty word sometimes)! One of the local places that I feel extremely inspired by is the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. I am coming to love and appreciate this incredible place more and more these days. It seems that the more time I spend here exploring, the more I am in awe of it. It is like being in a different world...my escape.

I think this is a place that I would like to work on preserving. This is going to be my New Year's goal (not calling it a resolution because I don't believe in them...they are usually left by the wayside a month or two into the new year)...volunteering in any way that I can to help this wild and incredible place...whether it be picking up trash, creating a website, doing some gardening work...whatever!

I thought I would share a few recent photographs from my weekly visits to this magical world.

Palm trees at dusk.

A bench to the sky.

One of the many beautiful wetlands paths.

A lone walker on the "swamp" trail. This area is a bit off the beaten path and it looks like a swamp. You can usually spot Ospreys and Turkey Vultures over here. This is also where the "Egret Convention" took place in a few of the photos later in this post.

A very misty dusk at the wetlands. Swamp Trail.

The moon between tree branches.

A gorgeous Blue Heron that flew down and landed about eight feet in front of me.

A Brown Pelican friend waiting on the trail for me :)

A beautiful Forester's Tern.

A Snowy Egret with windswept hair.

A Seagull!

At Tern at dusk with street lights.

A convention of Egrets. I had never seen so many in one place before. They just kept flying down and joining the feast. If you notice the one Egret in the middle is all fluffed up. She kept chasing the other Egrets away and making lots of noise too. She must have been having a bad day!

An Egret family with an adopted child.

Ms. Fluffy (Crabby?)

Marbled Godwit.

A large group of Egrets waiting on dinner. This is the area that I call the Feeding Ground. There are almost always some sort of interesting birds over here looking for food. I think the fish come in from the ocean near here.

A hovering Brown Pelican.

Another Egret. I loved the colors on this one.

Yakkity Tern.

A Seagull in flight (monochrome).

Last Monday, I decided to take off early from work and instead of going to yoga like I usually do, I headed to the wetlands. There was an extremely thick marine layer all during my almsot three hour walk. I was assuming that I would not see a sunset and was heading back to the bridge, when all of a sudden I turned around and saw this incredible sight! Perfect!