Male peregrine taking off from the Pismo Beach bluff Photo by Cleve Nash
The Peregrine Watch is so lucky to have such a dedicated photographer who contributes so much. Quiet, soft spoken with a very dry sense of humor. In a gathering of people around the spotting scopes, you would never know he was there, just listening and taking it all in.
A lady near the group looking at a photo album says “These are beautiful photographs. Did you take them?”
I answered promptly, “No, I just own the book.”
Lady: “Then who took them?”
I pointed to the man leaning on the truck.
The lady says, “Are these your photographs?”
Cleve Nash says, “Only the good ones!”
Female Belted Kingfisher Photo by Cleve Nash
He uses no trickery, gimmicks or Photoshop, etc. Just pure nature as seen through the naked eye. He hates anything man-made in his photos and goes lightly on the blood and guts themes. His subjects run the gamut from anything that walks, flies or you name it. He is very generous with his photography asking only that you make a donation to Pacific Wildlife Care. These are the folks, mostly volunteers, that rehabilitate birds and mammals in Morro Bay, California. His photos number in the thousands on his personal and Picasa websites, hawks, owls, eagles falcons, kites, ospreys, bobcats, elk, antelope, coyotes, foxes, etc.
As of late, Cleve has been making his usual rounds out on the road before daylight.
Osprey Photo by Cleve Nash
He’ll look for an osprey he knows will be in a tree or a kingfisher on the same sailboat mast. However, this is all secondary for now, but right now his quest is for something special that will be spending the winter here. It arrived here last year on the 25th of October. Her fifth consecutive year she has wintered here in the little hamlet of Baywood Park, California, population 2,025.
Baywood, California Photos by Heather O’Connor
It’s quite off the beaten path with just a liquor store, laundromat, cocktail bar and two Mexican restaurants. The quest is for a gorgeous, wild and un-banded female peregrine falcon given the name “Doris” from where she perches on the corner of Doris and Mitchell Streets, but her favorite haunt is behind the little coffee shop on Morro Bay in the cypress tree overlooking what used to be the “Baywood Navy.” Look up about 40 feet to where she perches and feeds on this limb. A good place under it to collect duck feathers. She was not there today, but Cleve will try again tomorrow. And when she does arrive, he will have until early March to capture her in his lens before she returns to her eyrie in early spring. No one knows where she calls home, but it’s obviously not a place where one would want to spend winter. We‘re just glad she visits us in winter.
Happy trails, Bob
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Please go to the “Photographers” page to directly access Cleve Nash’s Picasa photos.
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I watched and listened for them. Maybe the drums and gourd shakers lulled them to sleep.
