To Moss Landing
Kate and I are midway through our walk from Santa Cruz to Monterey. On Tuesday, we walked 11.5 miles from Santa Cruz to Aptos. Yesterday, we walked 15.5 miles from Aptos to Moss Landing. Above is a Great Egret I photographed on Monday’s walk.
Monday’s walk was largely along city streets, mostly along the coast with sections in parks, along rivers or marsh, or on the beach. Here is a Snowy Egret we saw at one of the beaches.
The only slightly unusual bird I saw was this Black-crowned Night Heron.
At one of the beaches, off in the distance, we saw some whale spouts, but they were sufficiently far away that we could not identify the whales.
Yesterday, the weather was overcast with rain at the beginning and end of our walk, but only intermittent sprinkling through the middle of the day. Above, the water rushed down a set of stairs as we made our way down to the beach to begin our hike.
About 13 miles of our walk was along the beach, usually with no one else around. We walked past this sea lion resting on the beach. It raised its head and looked at us for a moment, then flooped back down again apparently deciding that we were nothing to be worried about.
The coastline was beautiful to look out and very peaceful.
Heermann’s Gulls were the most common birds that I saw during the day.
We came across this Common Murre. I was happy to get this photo since the only other photos I had were the very distant shots in my last post of the Common Murres on Egg Rock.
While the weather was not ideal, our walk was still extremely enjoyable. It was lovely having the beach to ourselves for miles at a time.
The crashing waves left deposits of sea kelp as the tide receded. By putting my iPhone almost on the ground and using the wide angle lens, I was able to create the illusion that the beach extended far off into the distance even though the waves were less than 20’ away.
This is a Marbled Godwit, one of the two most common shore birds of the day.
The other common shore bird was the Long-billed Curlew.
Surf Scoters bobbed and dove in the waves living up to their names.
This tiny bird is a Snowy Plover. I saw two of these along the Florida shore during my April bicycle trip from Savannah to New Orleans.
This sick or injured bird is a Northern Fulmar. While alive when we saw it, I suspect that it was not likely to last much longer given its behavior.
The wind was not generally strong, but it sometimes gusted. When it went in the opposite direction of the waves, it created interesting images.
While we ended in the rain, we could see the clearing skies out to the west promising a lovely day for today’s hike to Marina.