The recent movie trailer on TV has me thinking about my wildlife encounters in California. It’s not completely new to me, since there are plenty of wild animals in Brookline: we’ve seen coyote, fox, turkey, deer, skunk, opossum, goose, chipmunk, squirrel, mouse, hawk, rabbit, and numerous songbirds. One difference is that I saw most of those animals only occasionally, and one-at-a-time. Another is that those animals are very familiar to me, and the animals I see now are less so. A third difference is many of the animals here are sought by tourists, whereas not so many people go to Massachusetts to view animals.

The animal that first drew us here is the sea lion, and our original goal was to live near the sea lion enclaves in west SC. Here’s a shot I took when I toured the SC wharf, the longest wooden wharf in the US, during the 150th anniversary celebration. There’s also a video of these animals on my youtube channel, Jody Griggs.   Instead of being neighbors of the sea lions, we ended up by the tide pools. These are the most common animals in the tidepool as far as I can tell. Are they anemones? I think this is a chiton, though my husband is skeptical. There are at least 4 animals in this photo. I have a video of them moving on my youtube channel, although the movement is hard to see. While I was at the tidepool taking these pictures, I also saw this bird. I see a lot of egrets in the swamps, but I’m not sure if this is one. It’s similar. Sorry the shot is so blurry.There are lots of great wading birds and water birds here; we see pelicans and cormorants every time we go to the beach. We see gulls every day, everywhere.

My new volunteer work is with The Otter Project (TOP), and though our main work is to document human uses of marine protected areas, on my first day I saw my second sea otter–we had seen one swimming in Monterey Bay near our house–and the spouts and backs of migrating whales. This shot is from one of the cliffs I survey; notice the airborne bird is below me. The cliffs are bigger on the ocean, as compared to the bay.

When I took that shot, I was just on the wrong side of this sign. 

I think it is supposed to say UNstable.

Even though our nearby shoreline faces south, we get a sideways view of the sunset during at least some times of the year. That is definitely not our house.