Last night after work I drove out to Pescadero Marsh Natural Preserve, about 15 miles south of Half Moon Bay down Highway 1. I had bought a couple of trail books for this area and one of them mentioned the marsh as a good place to see wildlife. In fact, I wasn’t exactly promised a badger, but let’s just say I had very high hopes of seeing a badger. Of course, I did NOT see a badger. But that’s okay because I fell in love with natural beauty of the place. It’s not huge – I only walked 2.5 miles – but it was very pretty AND I saw more wildlife than I’ve seen anywhere else here. I intend to share some of the views over the next few days but tonight here is just some of the wildlife I saw:
There were a lot of deer out in the marsh, many of whom I could only see the heads of, their bodies hidden by plants, unlike this one whose whole body was visible.
I have found in my limited experience that it takes black-tailed deer longer to run away from me than it does the white-tailed deer of the East Coast.
In addition to deer, I saw several great blue herons; there is a heron rookery at the marsh. But by far the most exciting thing I saw were two gray foxes!! I was walking back to my car as the sun set thinking how much I had really enjoyed this place, when I saw the foxes, which just put the trip over the top! They were very far away and the sun had already set below the horizon so there was little light, and I didn’t have time to use my tripod (though I don’t think I’ve ever changed lenses so fast in my life!) so this picture is grainy and terrible and will never make it into my portfolio, but I present it as proof that there IS wildlife in the Bay Area!
Pescadero is about an hour from me and involves an interminable bridge and a toll, and I wish the trails were longer, but I will be back there often. And for once it was nice to hear, instead of planes flying overhead as in most of the Bay Area (and honestly, in Northern Virginia as well), the roar of the Pacific. 🙂
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