Catchup yet again

Well I am on Holiday, not getting paid to write a blog - yet!!
While in Homer I met up with friends John and Heather and we took a ferry to Seldovia - a small village on the Kenai Peninsula that started life as a Herring fishing and caning factory town. There were so many herring that they thought it would be a goldmine forever. They didn't realize that dumping the waste from cleaning the fish back into the bay was killing the source of the herring's food and when it died so did the herring.

The inner Harbor at Seldovia

Making it so the Volunteer Firemen can find the hydrants

Past this guy in the open waters. Think he's done this before.

This was a trip with so many marine mammal sightings and aviary sights that it was hard to not shoot. Now that sharp cracking sound you hear is me breaking my arm as I pat myself on the back, as the shots to follow were done using my 70-200mm lens with an optical zoom that raised it to 800mm. Now shooting with an 800 on a moving boat at a target that was often moving as well can be very interesting. The quality of an optical zoom is not often the best but the Sony a7 did pretty well.

The whale activity was amazing. This is a humpback that is lunge feeding. The pink is the roof of its mouth and the grey green strings are the baleen they use to 'strain' the waters to get their food.

Otter family

Puffin

Tufted Puffin - They say they are rare to see

Eagle - He looks a little unkempt as he probably just fed

These are two eagle youths that will stay in the nest for two years and then try their wings and never return. The young eagle is bigger than the adult until it learns to fly.

I believe they said this was a Oyster Catcher - Dave gets the prize.

These last two are birds I don't remember, but the captain said they were both rare to see. Ethan - David - what are the names? It is not a Cormorant.

Again I forgot name - but the one has a small fish it's bringing home