It has been a while since I’ve managed to blog. I’m not sure if I’ve been too busy or too lazy. Maybe a little of both. The only real news in the last few weeks was my brother Mark coming out for a visit. He was heading to a sales meeting in Southern California and came out early to spend a few days in the Bay Area. The weather wasn’t the greatest, but we did manage to visit a few places.

One trip was to Ano Nuevo State Park to see the elephant seals. Ano Nuevo is a little north of Santa Cruz. It is one of only three places on the California mainland where elephant seals breed. During the breeding season you can go on docent led walks out to the breeding area to see the big bulls, mothers and pups. There were hundreds of seals on the beach when we were there, but only a few pups so far. Unfortunately it was quite foggy, so visibility was limited. For more pictures, see my Ano Nuevo gallery.

Some of the other places we visited include: Stanford University, Santa Cruz, Golden Gate Bridge, Twin Peaks (at night) and Point Reyes.

Other than that, Mary and I spend much of our weekends sleuthing for peregrines. There are quite a few peregrines popping up in the South Bay these days. A few have been spotted in the San Jose downtown area, including Clara (pictured on right), last year’s nesting female, as well as at least two different males, known as Carlos and Salvador. Jose, last year’s male, has not been seen since he left town last summer. We often see peregrines in and around Don Edwards NWR, including a juvenile. Other notable falcons in the area are Taylor and Montie.

First of all, Happy New Year! I had planned to write a log blog about everything that happened in 2007, but I guess all you really need to do is look through my old posts…

The other day I was playing around with the My Maps feature on Google. It’s pretty cool. You can find an area of interest on the map and annotate it with various markers. I had made one a while ago for my trip to Africa. This time I marked a bunch of points of interest at Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Mary and I visit there just about every weekend looking for various types of raptors and other wildlife.