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WILDLIFE WATCHING |
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The state's rugged coastline on the Pacific Ocean provides some of the best opportunities to see marine mammals, birds, and fish. In fall and winter, migrating gray whales represent a spectacular sight, and you can view them as they pass just offshore from places such as Point Reyes, Point Lobos, Salt Point, and Patrick's Point. Or, for a more personal experience, you can book a charter boat whale-watching excursion at major harbors from San Diego to Humboldt Bay. The most animated whales are the humpbacks, which you can see on fishing and sightseeing cruises from San Francisco Bay.
Marine mammals are popular and readily available creatures. In the heart of San Francisco, at PIER 39, as many as 600 California sea lions lounge contentedly on abandoned docks, barking at throngs of people who frequent the shoreline shopping complex.
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To the south, on the San Mateo coastline, is Ano Nuevo State Reserve, where giant elephant seals make their home year-round. The rookery is especially active from December through March, when large numbers of these ponderous creatures give birth to their pups on the beach. State Park rangers conduct guided walks by reservation only, in what has become one of California's most popular wildlife tours.
Monterey Bay is the playground for whimsical sea otters, the bewhiskered marine mammals that frolic in the kelp beds and tidal zones just offshore. Channel Islands National Park, a network of eight islands along the southern coast, hosts thousands of seals and sea lions on San Miguel Island, plus the West Coast's largest nesting site for endangered California brown pelicans on Anacapa Island. Sightseeing boats visit the islands from ports at Ventura, Oxnard, and Santa Barbara.
If you want close-up views of terrestrial wildlife, watch for herds of tule elk in the Owens Valley off Hwy. 395, along the eastern boundary of the state, or at Point Reyes National Seashore near San Francisco. On the North Coast, Roosevelt elk are year-round residents of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. You're encouraged to view them - as long as you don't approach too closely.
Farther south, in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, rare peninsular bighorn sheep gather around oases in the heat of summer. Sometimes you can see them from specially erected blinds.
State, federal, and local wildlife refuges abound in California, especially in the Central Valley. In the northeastern corner of the state, the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuges host nearly 1 million ducks and geese during their fall migrations along the Pacific Flyway. They also host the largest wintering concentration of bald eagles (as many as 500 at one time) in the lower 48 states. Summer brings shorebirds such as white pelicans, cormorants, herons, egrets, white-faced ibis, avocets, black-necked stilts, and killdeer. Other good refuges include Gray Lodge State Wildlife Refuge near Yuba City, Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, Los Banos State Wildlife Refuge, and the Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. Most of these have networks of dirt or gravel roads for self-guided auto tours.
If you're traveling along the coast, consider visiting one or more of these preserves:
- Bolsa Chica and Upper Newport Bay ecological reserves in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, where you can see more than 200 bird species and large concentrations of birds from August to April.
- Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, north of Monterey, where there's a good mix of otters, seals, shorebirds, and, in summer, migrating leopard and smooth-hound sharks that lay their eggs in the estuaries.
- San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, located in the southern half of the bay, which has a colony of harbor seals and five endangered species, including the California brown pelican, California clapper rail, and California least tern.
- Farallon National Wildlife Refuge, a complex of islands located 30 miles offshore of San Francisco, with the largest seabird breeding colony on the Pacific Coast south of Alaska. Here you can see the colorful tufted puffin, several auklets, and large groups of stellar sea lions, northern elephant seals, California sea lions, harbor seals, and northern fur seals. Local conservation groups sponsor boat trips to the Farallon Islands, although no foot traffic is allowed on the islands.
- Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes Hawk Hill at Battery 129 on the Marin Headlands. During the fall, 19 species of birds of prey, representing up to 12,000 birds, pass overhead in the largest concentration of migratory raptors in the Pacific States.
- Audubon Canyon Ranch/Bolinas Lagoon Preserve, a sanctuary near Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco, where wildlife includes nesting great blue herons and great egrets (best viewed April through June).
- Richardson Bay Audubon Sanctuary, near Tiburon and Sausalito, where bird watchers have counted more than 200 species, including pelicans, terns, and songbirds. A demonstration garden with hummingbirds and blacktail deer is located near the historic Lyford House.
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Department of Fish and Game
916/653-7664
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