Wildpics

For the first morning of the trip we saw the sun rising over the Sea of Cortez. We started the day near the tip of the Baja peninsula at the Gorda bank.
 
Humpback Whales spend the winter and early spring at the Gorda bank feeding and courting. It wasn’t long before we saw a mother-calf pair. The young whale was bigger than the calves we saw yesterday. We monitored the whales making moderately deep dives and thought that the hydrophone might be able to pick up some of their social sounds.
 
In addition to the mother and calf, we saw a pair that had been joined by an escort. These escorts may travel with the pair for the whole length of their northward migration. They swam quickly at the surface, one snorting as he exhaled and many raised their flukes repeatedly from the sea. 
 
In addition to the whales we were thrilled to see a Scalloped Hammerhead. This shark was about three feet long and we had a good view of the strangely shaped head. Many large sharks have been killed in the gulf for decades and we see fewer big ones now.
 
By early afternoon we arrived at Los Frailles, a granitic headland jutting out into the gulf. Scot took a group snorkelling while David led another group into the lush desert for a bird walk.  
 
The snorkelers saw Parrotfish, King Angel, Rainbow Wrasse and many of the other fish that the Sea of Cortez is famous for.
 
After snorkelling, Scot took his group on a birding walk. The two teams met up on a dusty road, like a scene out of a Western movie. They had had excellent views of one of the endemic species found only on the Baja peninsula, Gray Thrasher. Some of the other species observed included Cactus Wren, Hooded Oriole, Gila Woodpecker and Pyrrhuloxia as well as a charismatic bird, the Roadrunner. We all were back on the Spirit as the sun set behind the jagged mountains of the Cape region.