Month: May 2026

A Nest to Call Home

The mission: Construct a home for soon-to-be-born offspring.

The rules: Use only scavenged materials.  Carry them to the site in your mouth. Employ nothing but your appendages as tools.  Ensure shelter from wind, water, and roving bandits.

The seabirds in love introduced in a previous post set to work. As monitors for the Seabird Protection Network on the Northern California coast, we watch and wonder: Where can these parents-to-be, who spend much of the year over open water, find safe haven on our rugged shore?

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A Seal Mom’s Lullaby

Their sleek, torpedo-shaped bodies dive deep and glide gracefully through the sea. On land they “galumph,” rolling back on their hind flippers then belly-flopping forward. Although harbor seals  and other pinnipeds (fin-footed animals, including sea lions and walruses) may seem more at home in water, their distant ancestors once walked the earth.

Like us, harbor seals are warm-blooded, air-breathing mammals with hearts and lungs. The first time I observed a breeding colony, I realized that I have something else in common with females of the species:  We are Moms, fiercely devoted to and protective of our children.

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