Tufa Towers at Mono Lake, part 2: Hawks!
Sunday, 1 Oct 2017. 5pm.
Once we hiked out to the tufa towers at Mono Lake we stayed for a while. The setting sun provided nice lighting, its deeply angled and gold tinted rays highlighting the bizarre rock structures to make them seem even more unusual.
As we were gazing out across the lake we heard a bird squealing. At first I thought it was a sea gull or similar. "No, it sounds like a hawk," Hawk said. I saw a large bird swooping low across the water, so I pulled out my 'bird shooter' telephoto lens and caught it as it landed atop the leftmost spire in the tufa formation pictured above. Sure enough, it was an osprey!
Actually, it was two ospreys! One was in the nest atop a rock 100 meters out from shore, and the other had just flown in with a fresh catch of fish.
We stayed a while and took turns watching the birds through the scope before heading back uphill to the parking lot.
Once we hiked out to the tufa towers at Mono Lake we stayed for a while. The setting sun provided nice lighting, its deeply angled and gold tinted rays highlighting the bizarre rock structures to make them seem even more unusual.
As we were gazing out across the lake we heard a bird squealing. At first I thought it was a sea gull or similar. "No, it sounds like a hawk," Hawk said. I saw a large bird swooping low across the water, so I pulled out my 'bird shooter' telephoto lens and caught it as it landed atop the leftmost spire in the tufa formation pictured above. Sure enough, it was an osprey!
Actually, it was two ospreys! One was in the nest atop a rock 100 meters out from shore, and the other had just flown in with a fresh catch of fish.
We stayed a while and took turns watching the birds through the scope before heading back uphill to the parking lot.