Thursday, March 12, 2009

Harbor Seals Basking in Adorableness

Harbor seals and cormorants were all over these rocks near Fort Bragg, CA. The photos below were taken through the spotting scope from the same vantage point, so you get the idea of how powerful the zoom is. Click on any of the photos for more detail.

What a beauty!

Note the tip of the tongue showing in the photo above. Have you ever seen a seal's tongue before?

Ah, asleep at last.

4 comments:

Mary S. said...

Those are so cute. How close were you?

Unknown said...

Mary - Hard to say; the top photo gives the best idea, but even that is zoomed in a little. Maybe 75-100 yards away? With the naked eye the seals and cormorants were visible, but not with much detail.

Deb said...

I'm enjoying your pictures of the northern California coast. I lived briefly in Mendocino County, but I didn't have the chance to spend much time observing shorebirds. I didn't know there were white harbor seals!

Unknown said...

Hi Deb - I grew up in the Bay Area but have spent almost no time north of Marin County. This was a wonderful exploration. I think the seals were probably more a pale gray than white, though they certainly give a whitish impression. I'd grown up seeing the much larger sea lions on the rocks off the San Francisco coast, but don't recall seeing harbor seals much, if ever.