The Japanese Garden in the Sepulveda basin held an event late in May where they invited photographers and painters to come into the gardens and do their thing without the general public wandering around. About 20 people were there to accept the invitation. Out of the 20 only about 4 were painters.
While I fully expected bamboo, a zen garden, a tea house, plants, trees and all the other things you would expect to see in a Japanese garden I was surprised at all the wildlife I saw there.
I have never seen a goose this color before! I saw it as I was coming into the garden (top photo) then again on the way out (bottom photo). I think it was sleeping in the bottom photo.
I'm more used to seeing Canadian geese in this area and boy are they usually noisy! This family was very quiet compared to other geese I've seen. They seemed to be completely unconcerned by the people in the garden, walking right past them to get to where they wanted to go.
I was lucky enough to get a photo of this crane in flight. It didn't stay in the area long.
I heard one of the docents say the name of this bird, but I don't remember what she called it. It didn't seem to be comfortable with the few of us who were taking it's photo. It took off shortly after I got this shot.
Mallard ducks are very common in this area. There are a lot of them in the wildlife reserve "next door" to the Japanese Garden. I startled this one and his mate (I think we startled each other). They were hanging out in the reeds beside a plank bridge I was walking over. They scrambled out of their cover just after I walked past them. Since I didn't make any effort to chase them they didn't go very far away so I was able to get lots of great shots with the water drops on his head.
There were LOTS of swallows (Barn Swallows in the bottom photo) there busily building houses under the concrete bridge at the edge of the lagoon (top photo). This must be exhausting work as they get a bit of mud on their beak then go add it to the nest - again and again and again...
They seem to make communal nests because I can see 3 of them in the nest in the photo and another one flew out while I was watching. Very busy little birds!
It wasn't only birds there in the garden. I came upon this bunny. It let me get fairly close before it decided to be somewhere else although it didn't run away as if it was afraid. It just sort of hopped a little further away.
This dragonfly landed on the "boardwalk" I was crossing when I startled the ducks.
There were plenty of fish in the lagoon. I mostly only saw little tiny ones, then when I went over by the reeds I saw these bigger ones. This one was very colorful - iridescent blue on the side!
And I found a sun bather. I didn't even notice it until it moved. There was another one already up on the ledge but it ran away when I walked by. This one was climbing up the wall - maybe it had a date with the other one and I messed it up! oops. It let me get pretty close.
There were lots of bees in the water lilies!
We were only allowed to be in the garden for about 3 hours but it was a great time. I chatted with a couple of the other photographers. It was nice that the group was small enough that we weren't climbing over each other to get shots.
I've lived in the Valley all my life. I thought I had been to this garden many years ago, but after going inside I realized I've never been in there before. I'm glad my friend told me about this photo opportunity. It was a good day.
Part 2 (when I get it posted) will be more landscape and detail oriented. I take so many photos I have to break the blogs up into themes.
No comments:
Post a Comment