It's not that much of a hike, really - about 6 miles total, basically flat, though a fair amount is on sand, which makes for harder walking - but it's a Superbowl Sunday tradition: go out to the coast, park at Gazos Creek, and hike south in search of stray elephant seals.
The forecast had been gloomy for the few days beforehand: Sunday expected to be mostly cloudy, rain arriving by evening, and so forth. Perhaps this explains the light turnout (10 people), or maybe everybody was at Superbowl parties, or got scared away by the 4.4 earthquake Saturday morning.

Mostly cloudy, storm coming in... er, right. It was cool and rather windy, though.
(As usual, click for larger images.)

Birds at play in the surf.

Little bitty bird, marginally out of the surf.

There was a fair bit of surf, at that.

A nice clear view of the Pigeon Point lighthouse.

The scrubby little willows seem to think it's spring already.

One large egret, on the rocks.

An arbitrary view along the coast.

Ah, the secret island of the elephant seals, seen hazily in the distance! You can just make out the Elephant Seal Hostel.

A cluster of cormorants.

Orf! Orf!
Hey, wait a minute! You ain't no elephant seal!
Are sea lions supposed to have shaggy backs? Is this one molting, or just moldy?

Behold the noble lion of the sea!
(No, I wasn't close enough to pet it, nor to offer it a herring. "Objects in telephoto lens are not as close as they appear.")

"This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council."

This time, we found two elephant seals (and that sea lion) on the little beach where normally we find just one. Most of the group had taken the usual route along the cliffs, and climbed down the steep trail to the beach. I, meanwhile, had taken advantage of the low tide to walk along the rocky beach, which is why I almost tripped over the sea lion - shortly after which, I walked up onto the "beach sofa" to see why there weren't any elephant seals there, only to find, on turning around, that I'd walked up right between two of them. They're pretty well hidden from the downhill side....

Lying on his sofa and applauding? I guess we must have been putting on a good show for him.

This rock formation would be pretty impressive if it were more than knee high. I don't recall having seen it before; guess I'd never been there when the tide was low enough.

There sure were a lot of these li'l snowy plovers scurrying around the beach!

Gimme! Despite the apparent abundance of sand-dwelling creepy-crawlies for the birds to eat, they were forever trying to steal each other's food. I guess the other plover's sand bug is always juicier.

Ah, here's our third elephant seal. We've made our quota for the day.

Poor harbor seal... everybody's pointing cameras at him.

More plovers, also arguing over food. Hmmm... somewhere around here, there must be the proverbial plover's egg the size of an emerald!

Curiously, just a few minutes before this, we'd come across 3/5 of a starfish, and the question had arisen: "What eats starfish?"
This doesn't really answer that, but it's clearly a partial answer to the closely related question, "What tries to eat starfish?"
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