Monterey never disappoints

There is always something to do in the Monterey area.  This is our first stop, three hours south of our home in Northern California.  We generally drive about three hours at a time, because the parakeets get tired when we travel longer.  How do we know?  They get cranky.  Beanie and Barney start squabbling with each other.  Then we stop, and they immediately take naps.

As I said, there is always something to see in Monterey.  This week is the Pro-Am gold tournament at Pebble Beach.  We checked it out on Tuesday, a practice day.  Lee goes to see golf; I go to enjoy the outdoors, walk, and watch for birds, whales, seals, and otters.  We saw our share of everything, including Ross's geese, American coots (all over the fairways), and a Say's phoebe, new to me.

Coots have giant feet, as you can see in the photo above.

Say's phoebe (Sayornis saya) is named after Thomas Say, one of the founders of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

The photographs above were taken by Lee, with an amazing camera that Santa gave him for Christmas.  My sister went to Peru in November, on a trip with a group of birders, and discovered that many of them were using a new camera.  She came back and told us about it, and Lee decided he wanted one.  It is a Canon PowerShot SX50 HS.  It is small, lightweight, and easy to carry.  It has a single zoom lens that extends no more than 5 inches, and magnifies up to 50 times, at 1200mm.  It has a stabilizing feature, and can be automated or operated manually to the extent one wishes.  The quality of the photos is phenomenal, considering the ease of use.  Amazing!  Digital technology is improving by leaps and bounds.

I have read that this camera does not work well indoors or in poor light, but for outdoor use it is fun and provides immediate gratification.  In addition, cost is about $350!!  Can you believe it?  For the amateur, it is perfect.  The professional may find it lacking.

Offshore, we found one lone seal resting on a rock:

There were whales spouting offshore, put no photos are worth posting, as they just show tiny puffs of vapor in a mass of ocean.

I came for the exercise, scenery, and wildlife.  Lee came for the golf.  Pebble Beach is one of the most beautiful golf courses on the planet, and it is impossible to not appreciate it's beauty, even for those who don't play golf.

 

 For those of you who know golf, we followed a couple of golf pros on the course for a few holes each as they practiced.  One was Vijay Singh (from Fiji):

And the other was K.J. Choi, from South Korea:

Fun stuff.  They hit pretty well.