I was tying my shoelace on a seaside path when I sensed something nearby—a paw pressed lightly into the dirt. A dog’s, I assumed. But then I noticed its hefty size and the soft blur of fur at its edges. Glancing upward, I found myself staring into the golden eyes of a bobcat.
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?
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.
“Do you think whales ever walked the earth?”I thought the captain of a whale watch boat in Monterey Bay was asking a trick question. But it’s no riddle—it’s a scientifically documented, evolutionary fact.
The largest creatures on the planet, whales are classified, along with dolphins and porpoises, as cetaceans, from an ancient Greek word for sea monster. However, they descended from rather humble four-legged mammals that hunted and fished along the riverbanks of what is now Pakistan and India.
In one of evolution’s most dramatic U-turns, these land dwellers returned to the ocean from which their ancestors had emerged. In a geological blink—roughly 10 million years—they reshaped their bodies for an aquatic life. Fur thinned. Limbs flattened. Tails strengthened. Nostrils began their slow migration to the top of the head. Hooves gave way to flukes
A deluge struck California over the holidays. With almost daily downpours, my rain gauge recorded thirteen inches in less than two weeks. Trees fell. Cables snapped. Thousands lost power. For a while, our neighborhood became an island, with roads flooded in every direction. During a typical winter, rain collects in shallow depressions in the land, called vernal ponds. This year entire fields turned to lakes.
As I jog along a local beach, a raucous skirmish brings me to a full stop. In a furious duel for possession, two squawking gulls are tugging a Dungeness crab into the air. When their grip loosens, the hapless victim plummets—upside down, legs flailing---onto the sand....
The chartered fishing boat plows through the swells due west from the Sonoma coast with nary an angler on board. Birders—sheathed in slickers, binoculars slung around their necks—line the railing. As my maiden voyage begins, cryptic cries erupt around me.
Mud sucks—literally. On land, it squishes underfoot and slimes your shoes. In seaside shallows, it clutches your feet and tugs with the ferocity of an angry alligator.
I know. Wading back to shore after fieldwork with Bodega Marine Lab scientists in Tomales Bay, I lost my balance and plunged into what felt like slow-hardening concrete. Every time I tried to pry my foot loose, I lurched back into the sludge. A graduate student reached out to help—only to skid into the ooze next to me.
Once again they are on the wing. Along the Pacific Flyway—a 4,000-mile corridor stretching from Alaska to Baja— millions of birds of many feathers and forms are flying south to warmer climes. But none dazzle the eye and stir the soul more than raptors, meat-eating birds of prey that include falcons, hawks, vultures and eagles.
‘Tis the season, not just for spooky ghosts and goblins, but far scarier creatures that prowl along the California coast. During Sharktober, which extends from September to November, great white sharks, the largest predatory fish on the planet, are on the hunt.
Every year these lords of the deep migrate more than a thousand miles from a zone east of Hawaii known as the “White Shark Cafe.” Their destination: the Red Triangle, a swath of ocean stretching from Bodega Bay in the north to the Farallones Islands in the west and Monterey Bay in the south. The cold, nutrient-rich waters of the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary nourish a rich array of marine life, including seals and sea lions that lure great whites eager to feed heavily and build strength and stamina for the winter months.
