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| The second bridge (end of maintained trail) |
Coastal Scrub is the last of the five habitats on our checklist. We saved Abbott's Lagoon until October, partly because we didn't want to finish the challenge too quickly and partly in order to get the benefit of the fall migration.
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| The first bridge: we saw a grebe and a coot in the pond |
Abbott's Lagoon, reached from Pierce Point Road, is best known as a birding spot. We wanted to be there as early as possible, when creatures are most likely to be active. By a strenuous effort, we got out of the house by 8:30 and arrived at the trailhead about 10:00 on a brisk, windy Sunday morning the day before the season's first real storm was forecast. The only car already in the lot belonged to a young couple with babies in tummy packs, who were just leaving because it was too windy for them.
The official trail is a straightforward 1.1 miles ending at the "second bridge"--we ventured a little farther through the sand. The landscape--coyote bush, grasses and dry lupine, mostly--is not easily distinguished from "grasslands/pastoral zone" at Tomales Point. Past the second bridge, it's surely "ocean shoreline." There's nothing much to say about this as a walk, so we'll just do a Jules Evens and list who we saw (of course if we'd been Jules Evens, our list would surely be five times as long):
American pelicans (flock of 6)
pied-billed grebes
coots
crows (Stephen: "Crows would be charismatic if they weren't common as sin.")
Western grebe
white-crowned sparrows
golden-crowned sparrows
American goldfinches in non-breeding plumage (identified by a fellow-hiker who spoke confidently and carried large binoculars)
hummingbird (when in doubt, guess Anna's)
marsh hawks
a bottle-green grasshopper
a small dusty-orange moth-type thing
common (great white) egret
terns (or maybe gulls) (an interpretive sign mentioned migrant Caspian terns, so we felt entitled to some)
black-tailed deer
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| American pelican in flight |
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| something pretty from the mint family |
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| bird tracks in the sand |
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| an odd-shaped feather |
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| silverweed cinquefoil. |
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| Lapping water makes scalloped lagoon edge |
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| a pair of discarded feathers |
Practical lessons for road and trail:
1. On a short, slow wildlife-viewing ramble, bring the bigger camera. For crying out loud.
2. On a fall hike at Abbott's, definitely bring a windbreaker. We did and we were glad.
Total habitats visited: 5. Total miles hiked: 38.5.
Our fundraising page: Foothill Marmots in Point Reyes Trails Challenge
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