Bodega Head: Part 1 (Up High)

 Yesterday the tide was at -1.35 at Bodega Harbor.  How could I resist doing a little tide pooling?  I had multiple reasons for visiting Bodega Head yesterday, both the tide pools, and an interest in the Common Murre colony on Bodega Rock, and to scope out where I'll be spending my Saturdays for the next few months as a whale watch docent.  Cailin was game, so off we went!

Cailin takes a photo of the rocks and sea below Bodega Head

with a little zoom of the lens, you can see the Bodega Marine Lab to the north of the area where we set up for whale watches. 

and zooming in, you can see the sea birds on the little "island/rocks" off Bodega Head.

We had to walk up the trail a ways to get this photo, and still needed the zoom. I'm pretty confident that these are cormorants and not common murre, but I'm not really good with birds... yet... so I won't swear to it.

Cailin spotted this on the cliff while I was taking photos of the plants growing on different areas of the cliff.

Raven in nest

Of course along the walk there were other things to see.  There were some pretty risky looking (and unofficial) trails leading down the side of some of the cliff faces at an angle, and one of these in particular seemed to have become a favorite spot for young people.

it's hard to see in this photo, but there is graffiti drawn in the sand, and if you look on the left about halfway up the photo, you can see a young woman, which gives you some idea of the scale and how far down we were looking to take this photo.

Heading back after taking the photos, we paused to take a few (more) photos of a hawk that sat in a stand in the middle of what was otherwise a pretty bare area: