Walking back to the boat a few minutes ago I saw a snowy white Egret on the shore. Now that I am tied to a dock in the Bay Area, I am reflecting on the abundance of various sea and land creatures I have been fortunate enough to view in the last two weeks.

As we were going out of Puget Sound we saw a number of harbor porpoises, as well as seals and eagles. We passed lots of whales in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, but they were far away from us. The seals were in every harbor on the coast. In some places, they came up close to the docks, perhaps the result of some people giving them handouts.

One night, off the coast of Oregon, both Jane and I were treated to porpoises swimming and playing with our boat. They were with us for a good part of both my watch and Jane’s, probably over two hours. One could not see their bodies in the dark, but the luminescent trails that they left with the phosphorescence in the water. When they surfaced, they left a bright streak in the sea. It seemed mystical, as they were enjoying playing in our wake. They would swim under our bow, zig-zagging bzck and forth.

In Fort Bragg, a busy fishing port, there were many Sea Lions, appearing to be looking for a handout off the fish processing facility docks as well as elsewhere in the river. We returned to our boat from a walk to find a large one sunning himself on the next finger pier over. He was none too happy that we had to walk by him to get to our boat, making some aggressive noises and giving us what I took to be his evil eye. This was our first view of vultures, in Fort Bragg, among the many gulls and other scavenger birds. We also saw an otter or two.

I wrote in another post about our road trip out of Fort Bragg to the Lost Coast. On that trip we were treated to views of vultures, wild turkeys, and deer.

Whales were everywhere along the coast, usually quite far from us so that we could see them spout, but could not see much of their bodies unless they broached or splashed their tails in the sea. But south of Fort Bragg we were treated to a large group of them cavorting about very close aboard; surfacing near boat, blowing and showing their fluked tails. They appeared to be dining, as there were many seabirds about looking for remnants to scavenge. And then our last whale was seen right underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, near the south tower.

And last but not least, we found Brown Pelicans on our approach to San Francisco and that Snowy Egret just now. Wild!