Winter Wildlife Docent Day 6

Volunteering every Thursday in March has been a great opportunity to closely observe the progress of the elephant seal weaned pups. On March 28th, I had a split shift — the Point Reyes Lighthouse in the morning and Drakes Beach in the afternoon.

At the lighthouse overlook, we spotted about a dozen whales in 2 hours — mostly spouts and slivers of back. Some whales were traveling in close pairs and spouted simultaneously right next to each other. These may have been mother and baby gray whales but it’s still a little early in the migration season. Mother and baby gray whales are typically the last to leave the birthing grounds in Baja for their feeding grounds in Alaska. Photographer Joey joined us at the overlook and, as always, was a wealth of knowledge about whales and other wildlife — especially helpful for a novice docent like myself! We had several large groups of children who gravitated immediately to the whale figures in our docent display. They also love to hold the whales and touch the actual whale baleen on display. You can almost see their minds at work pondering how the whales use the baleen to strain their tiny food. Around noon, a huge thunder cloud rolled in and it felt like someone had turned on air conditioning — suddenly, it became chilly and windy. Fortunately, it was time for me to switch locations.

Back at Drakes Beach, I spent the afternoon leading small groups of visitors out on a sandy berm overlooking the large group of weaned elephant seal pups for a closer view. Mostly the weanlings were snoozing but a few were splashing in a pool of nearby shallow water (nicknamed “the kiddie pool”) — see the video which includes some shrill weaner vocalizations. One solitary weaner was making its way up the beach from a practice swim in the ocean — pausing every now and then to rest or get its bearing. It left a track of smoothed sand in its wake. Visitors watched as another weaner inched over a sand berm heaving its plump body slowly up and over to final victory - the crowd quietly cheered its accomplishment.

In addition to having a fabulous day with visitors and my fellow docents, I saw stunning wildlife while traveling between Drakes Beach and the Lighthouse — a herd of male Tule elk with beautiful fresh new antlers sitting in the grass, a coyote exploring in the field near the road, and a red-tailed hawk flying right in front of me and catching a rodent on the hillside less than 10 feet away. What I apparently missed was a badger in the same field with the coyote and Tule elk. A visitor shared her photos of the badger with me later in the day. One of these days I will see a badger!

Whale watching at the Lighthouse overlook