It won't be easy getting up a few hours from now, at 2:30 a.m. Pacific time, for our flight home through Detroit. But our last two days in California were a beautiful parting gift—as were some of the birds and people we met at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay Wildlife Refuge. On the flight home I'll tally up how many bird species we saw over the course of our trip, a number that won't include those we saw but couldn't identify. At times I wished that we'd had our ornithologist friends like Pat Johnson and Rich MacDonald along.
On a walk today we saw these owlish-looking pods on what appeared to be a eucalyptus tree.
The bark on a neighboring tree was a work of art in itself.
This cormorant swam close to us during our bayside walk. We'll see cousins of these guys on our bay in Maine when we get home—unless they've already headed south.
If I could offer any words of wisdom after nearly three weeks enjoying nature in the American West, it would be to suggest that you check a map and look for national wildlife reserves in your area. I lost track of how many of those we visited on this trip, but they are a wonderful, and overlooked, national resource—a place to find beauty and tranquility as well as plants and animals.
More from Maine and The Naturalist's Notebook when we get back home...