We continue savoring the strange atmosphere of San Francisco and the delights of a bustling city full of young and prosperous people.  Yesterday Anne and I caught a bus to Pacific Beach and Sutro Heights to “do the tourist thing” of walking through parkland at the entrance to the Golden Gate inlet.  The morning gray gave way to partly cloudy as we scanned the rocks and water for passing birds and shared the trail with resident joggers and tourist families working their way up and down steep hills.  There is no coastal plain here.

We returned from Santa Cruz Saturday evening after a two days of pelagic birding.  We boated from the popular wharf in Monterey on Friday and from a smaller marina at Half Moon Bay on Saturday.  The sea was, as is usual, exciting, significant swells creating a continuously changing array of hills and valleys among which birds sat and flew coming into and out of view.  Gulls waved continuously, fulmar gave their typical flap, flap, soar pattern, and shearwaters sped through the waves on bowed wings.  Humpbacked whales and porpoises surfaced and splashed.  Numerous ocean sunfish paddled along the surface.  One ignored the boat and dined on by-the-wind sailors.   We primates oohed and ahed.   At the end of each day we returned to shore happy and tired after a day of struggling to see the sea and to maintain our balance on an ever rocking boat.

Next week we leave the coast and explore the eastern Sierras and Yosemite.   The weather will be very different there.  Whereas here it is chilly in the morning and cool in the afternoon, there it will be cold in the morning and warm in the afternoon.  We’re hoping the weather and the altitude will accommodate us to weather we will find in the Andes.

Strange to say, we will leave summer and arrive into winter in Peru.  Late winter, yes, and in the tropics, but winter none-the-less.  Days will be lengthening, birds will be coming into spring plumage, and trees will be blooming.  That will be a shock, but perhaps not so much as when we return later into the heart of fall.