An amazing high tide at 8 am today of 6.7 feet above usual sea level. Brown pelicans have had the Venice breakwater all to themselves for hours, as a series of islands. I've never seen pelicans sitting on these rocks before. Note: A new documentary opening today about the hardships faced by pelicans from human changes to their habitats: Pelican Dreams by Judy Irving. http://womensenews.org/story/arts/141106/pelican-dreams-flying-start-november-films#.VF1Y7fnF98E
The sea is flat as a bowl of jelly because the Santa Ana winds are blowing from land toward the ocean. No ocean-to-land breezes to start any waves.
I discovered a star tonight: Fomalhaut... aka Fum al Hut (Arabic for "mouth of the fish"). I was at Point Dume, a volcanic intrusion, on Zuma Beach in Malibu about 6:30 pm.
Sitting at the base of the huge precipice of rock, I noticed a bright star in the thin gap between the cliff and a 30-foot boulder broken off the cliff.
I watched the star slowly slip to my right behind the boulder as Earth turned and wondered whether it was a star or a planet. Later I stood up and walked to where I could see the whole southern sky. This star was very bright--1.2 magnitude, as I later learned, and it was the only one in that part of the sky. With the light pollution from Los Angeles, I couldn't really see Scorpio or Sagitarrius or the Milky Way. I saw one reddish star and thought it was Antares in Scorpio but later learned it was Mars. Scorpio had already slipped beneath the western horizon of the sea. I could see Cygnus the swan and Aquila, the eagle, but east of them only this one unknown star. Once I looked at the star map at home, I learned that Fomalhaut "lies in quite a barren region of the southern sky and because of this has become known as "The Solitary One" (The Nature Company Guides: Advanced Skywatching, p.269). It's in Pisces Austrinus, which is down in the southern sky below Aquarius. What a lovely time, nestled in a lap of volcanic rock, watching the stars and the waves, safe in the shadow of the mighty intrusion.
Brown pelicans have had the Venice breakwater all to themselves for hours, as a series of islands. I've never seen pelicans sitting on these rocks before. 
