Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Fauna in Channel Islands National Park

One of the most attractive elements of the Channel Islands NP is the huge amount of animals you can see in the wild! Not only thousands of birds (sea gulls and pelicans mostly in Anacapa) but also sea mammals: dolphins, whales, sea lions...

On the boat trip to Anacapa, we got to see two amazing animals:

- Dolphins:



They were playing around the boat for a while and then left. It is really nice when they come out of the water, like jumping!



- Blue whales! The largest sea mammal and one of the largest animals in the world. You can't actually see much of their bodies, but their size was amazing!



They came out of the water expelling water... pretty cool!



One of them showed its tail! According to the boat captain, that was a rare sighting!!



In the island, there were many sea lions, sea elephants and seals. Some pictures now (I can't distinguish very well amongst these animals, so maybe not all of them appear... hehe).




But, without any doubt, Anacapa is Bird Island. If the name of the island were to be changed, nobody would complain XD. There are sea gulls everywhere!!



Look at the amount of birds!!



Some bird chicks look really really young... so vulnerable... 頑張って小さい鳥!!



There were also many pelicans. First, I saw these young ones which just started to fly:



Then, on one side of the island, I found pelican headquarters... hundreds of them!! Cool!




Before leaving the island, the captain went to one of the places with sea lions so we could take a closer look onto them:



So, that was an amazing day! I could see whales, dolphins, sea lions and thousands of birds!!

No comments: