October on Monterey Bay: Thousands of visitors. No reservations. Remarkably few complaints about the accommodations.
Every autumn, thousands of travelers arrive on Monterey Bay. Some have flown from Alaska. Others have spent weeks making their way down the Pacific Coast. None have luggage, passports, or a particularly good understanding of personal space.
Welcome to Elkhorn Slough. Nature’s busiest little airport.
October is a wonderful time to visit this muddy, marshy, magnificently alive corner of Monterey Bay. The summer crowds are thinning, the fog occasionally remembers to take a day off, and the birds are arriving for their winter holidays.
And what a collection of characters.
There’s the great blue heron, standing motionless in the shallows, looking like a retired philosophy professor contemplating the meaning of fish.
Nearby, a great egret stalks breakfast with the delicate precision of a ballet dancer who happens to enjoy swallowing small creatures whole.
The long-billed curlew sports a spectacularly curved beak that looks like someone bent a drinking straw and forgot to straighten it. Apparently, it’s brilliant for extracting tasty morsels from the mud. Evolution has a marvelous sense of humor, (see photo below).
Then there are the sandpipers. Tiny, frantic little birds scurrying across the mudflats like shoppers who just discovered the supermarket closes in five minutes.
Overhead, brown pelicans cruise past in formation, looking vaguely prehistoric and utterly unconcerned with the aerodynamic opinions of engineers.
And as autumn deepens, more wintering ducks join the party. Northern pintails, American wigeons, and assorted feathered visitors settling in for the season.
What’s remarkable is how far some of these little creatures have traveled. Thousands of miles, navigating by cues scientists are still working to fully understand. No GPS. No roadside motels. No complaining about airline food.
Meanwhile, I occasionally need Google Maps to find my way out of a parking garage.
The really astonishing part? This happens right in our backyard.
The Elkhorn Slough watershed has recorded more than 300 bird species. And some years, surveys have counted tens of thousands of birds during the fall migration season.
You don’t need to know a godwit from a grocery cart to enjoy the spectacle.
Bring binoculars if you have them. Bring curiosity if you don’t. Wander the trails at the Elkhorn Slough Reserve, or spend a little time near Moss Landing watching the tide uncover an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet.
Low tide is especially entertaining. As the water retreats, mudflats emerge and the shorebirds descend for lunch. Nobody waits for a table.
You may even spot a sea otter floating on its back, apparently wondering why everyone else is working so hard.
One small request: Give the birds and other wildlife plenty of room. They’ve traveled a long way, and the last thing they need is an overly enthusiastic human chasing them around for an Instagram photo.
Perhaps the nicest thing about birdwatching is that it asks almost nothing of us.
No tickets. No complicated equipment. No membership required. No need to identify every bird or post photographic evidence that you’ve seen it.
Just slow down. Look around. Listen.
There’s an entire world going about its business while we’re busy checking email, worrying about tomorrow, or wondering why our phones keep suggesting things we never wanted.
And sometimes, all it takes to rediscover a little wonder is a walk beside a muddy slough.
The birds know where they’re going. The rest of us might learn something by occasionally getting lost.
From your friends at KRML — celebrating the wonderfully wild, occasionally muddy, and endlessly surprising Monterey Bay.