Mariah Walker's Blog, page 2
July 23, 2012
Birds on the California Shore
I finally made it to California! Shore birds were high on my to-photograph list. I started out at Long Beach. It was a cloudy day with nice, soft light. I really wanted a pelican shot, since East coast pelicans have never cooperated with me. I saw my first pelican in flight, clicked the shutter, and… filled up my memory card. Oh well. There would be more. I walked along the beach until I saw another sitting on the sand. Sitting pelicans are good, too! A man came jogging along the beach, scaring the pelican off. But he just flew down the beach a bit. I could still see him! Until someone let their dog loose, which chased all the birds on the beach out of sight. 
After I buried the dog (just kidding!) I tracked down the pelican. Then I found some of his friends diving in the ocean. I have to work on my tracking-diving-birds skills. (I’ll post some diving shots once I clean them up.)
We also visited La Jolla, where I took pictures of surfers to torture Ryan, and Cardiff-by-the-Sea, which is a weird name for a beach. The pelicans seemed fond of it though, because I saw tons of them there. A few flew directly over me, and I finally got an awesome shot of a pelican in flight. One out of 514 isn’t bad! 
Here are my pelican and sandpiper shots. I saw some black seagulls too, but none of them made the cut. Sorry, seagulls!
Yep, that’s 22 pelicans.
Perfect. Thanks pelicans, that’s a wrap!
Wombats at the San Diego Zoo!
I was so excited to hear that the San Diego zoo had wombats. I went through a phase in high school where I really loved marsupials, and liked to confound people with my knowledge of quolls, quokkas, and kowaris (not to mention numbats!). Although I make frequent zoo trips, I haven’t seen many marsupials beyond kangaroos, so I was looking forward to finally seeing something more exotic.
Are you ready for this???
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If you are wondering where the wombat is, so am I. I think he even left a pellet in his burrow to taunt me. Wombat! I had one chance to see you. And you had to go and break my heart.
I only took these pictures as proof of Betrayal Vombatus. As a bonus, when I pulled out my camera, I tricked everyone in a 12-foot radius into thinking that the wombat was out. At least other people knew my pain. (As do you. The wombat tragedy continues.)
I guess I’d better start saving to go to Australia…
June 26, 2012
Il Più Feroce Dinosauro
The dinosaur is back from Italy, and has started a fundraiser to pay for recent damages to the Sistine Chapel. He didn’t want me to mention that he caused the damages.
Before he was run out of town (well, more like waddled out of town because he ate ten tons of gelato), Claudia helped translate his book. Grazie mille, Claudia!
Meglio non avere guai con questo dinosauro. Lui è grosso e cattivone. È la “lucertola del tuono”. Mangia tutto in un sol boccone!
O almeno così sostiene…
Segui le sue avventure e le sue pesanti orme in tutto il Giurassico.
(22 pagine illustrate. Ottimizzato per l’orientamento orizzontale.)
Leggilo in italiano (Read it in Italian) on:
Amazon
Amazon IT
Leggilo in italiano e inglese (Read it in Italian and English) on:
Amazon
Amazon IT
Don’t give me that look. Clean up that mess you made of the Forum and apologize to the nice Romans!
June 18, 2012
Seagulls and Sunsets
Whenever I can, I visit the bay at sunset to see if seabirds are hanging out on the pilings. I really want to catch pelicans there someday. On Saturday night, there were no birds whatsoever on the pilings. I should have guessed after none of the pelicans responded to my e-vite.
Still, there were plenty of laughing gulls swooping across the sky, so I did my best to take pictures of them in flight. I think they enjoyed giving me a challenge.
Tricky!
“How long is your lens? 70-300mm? I think I pooped on one of those once.”
I stayed until after sunset. I think this is one of the few times where the scene looks more spectacular as a photograph.
I hope it won’t be long before another New Jersey sunset. Maybe next time the pelicans will answer my telegraph.
June 12, 2012
Der wildeste Dinosaurier
The dinosaur is on a world tour! He greatly enjoyed his trip to Germany, though he’s still working on his German roar.
He assures me that this photo is to scale and not Photoshopped. He would like to add that he doesn’t even know what Photoshop is, or why he mentioned it in the first place.
The dinosaur sounds five times more ferocious in German!
Leg dich nicht mit diesem Dinosaurier an. Er ist wild und frei. Er ist eine Donner-Eidechse. Und fresse für zwei!
Behauptet er zumindest…
Verfolge seine Abenteuer, während er durch den Jura stampft.
(22 illustrierte Seiten. Optimiert für Querformat-Modus.)
If you still have the courage to scroll down, you’ll find the German translation.
Das Buch auf Deutsch lesen (Read it in German) on:
Amazon
Amazon DE
Das Buch auf Deutsch und Englisch lesen (Read it in German and English) on:
Amazon
Amazon DE
Thanks so much to Kelly for helping me with this! Though she’s amazing with German (and living in Germany now), she got two of her friends who are native German speakers to look this over. Janine came up with a rhyming version that I love, because rhymes are wunderbar. Thanks again to Kelly, and a huge thank you to Janine and Anna, who are obviously incredible people for helping their friend’s brother’s girlfriend whom they’ve never even met. Ein herzliches Dankeschön!
May 30, 2012
lolgulls
This is my favorite place to go at sunset. Birds love hanging out in the last rays of light, and I love taking their pictures. I’ve only gotten cormorants and these guys so far. One day I’m hoping for a pelican. 
I googled “black-headed gulls,” and they are a type of gull. But not this type! Tricksy. These are laughing gulls in their mating plumage. I didn’t hear them laughing. Why so serious, gulls?
Some photo sessions seem like they’re going well, but then you get home and discover that none of your pictures came out. The opposite happened this time, so I was very happy. Thanks, gulls!
And now, I present to you: Gulls doin’ gull things:
May 21, 2012
Eu Gosto de Dinossauros (I Like Dinosaurs)
Guess what?
Did you guess that The Most Ferocious Dinosaur is now in Portuguese?
Because if you did… that’s pretty impressive. Why would you guess something so random?
Thanks to Amalia for translating! You can get it on Amazon here.
While researching this book, I stumbled across a fact I had never known before: T-rex sometimes consumed frozen prey, though they often regretted the resulting sugar rush.
Worth it!
May 16, 2012
Je suis un dinosaure
That’s right!
The Most Ferocious Dinosaur is now in French!
Je suis très heureux! (I am so happy!) A HUGE thank you to Hélène for translating!
You can lisez-le en français (read it in French) on:
Amazon
Amazon FR
Amazon UK
You can also lisez-le en français et anglais (read it in French and English) on:
Amazon
Amazon FR
Amazon UK
Ceci est la version double langage. (This is the dual language version.) Your cover may vary. The version on Amazon.fr has the French cover on top, and the French version first. Both versions have a table of contents in the front, so you can choose which language you’d like to read first. I want my readers to be happy, or heureux, as the case may be.
Here’s the French description:
Vous ne voudriez pas provoquer ce dinosaure. Il est grand et il est méchant. C’est un lézard tonnerre. Une machine qui dévore!
C’est du moins ce qu’il prétend…
Suivez ses aventures alors qu’il traverse le Jurassique.
(22 pages illustrées. Optimisé pour mode paysage.)
For reading this whole post, you get a special preview of a never-before-released page (and one of my favorites)… in French!
Yeah, Dinosaur! You show that butterfly!
Step Aside, Sistine Chapel
I mean, it’s okay. The paintings and stuff are pretty good. But the other day, I made rolls and Ryan helped me put cinnamon in them. Here’s a ball of dough about to go in the oven:
My hands were floury and buttery, so Ryan took pictures. The rolls looked glorious and tasted even better.
YOUR MOVE, MICHELANGELO.
May 11, 2012
God of Bread
One day, on a whim, I searched the internet for how to make bread. Fresh rolls are one of my favorite things in the world, so I attempted those first. I took some pictures along the way. There aren’t that many, because 1) I didn’t want too much evidence if the rolls turned out terribly, and 2) I didn’t want to expose my camera to too much butter and flour.
Here we go!
Riiiiise, my pretty!
I might need to work on sizing them equally…
Butter’d!
Oven’d!
Brown’d!
They… they should have sent a poet.
WHO ATE MY ROLLS? Wait… it was me.
And that’s the story of how I made amazing rolls on my first try. It made me feel… powerful. I love you, internet!
Of course, this story is also a tragedy, because the rolls had such short lives. But they gave themselves to a noble cause (aka my insatiable desire for carbs). And I still have eleven packets of yeast.
