adventure – Jonathan Eisen's Lab

So I wrote about going out to Pt. Reyes a few weeks ago and focused on seeing elephant seals on January 10. See my post about this here https://phylogenomics.me/2026/01/13/elephant-seals-at-point-reyes/. But the trip yielded much much more wildlife viewing / nature viewing than elephant seals and that is what I am writing up here.

The plan was to meet up with two colleagues / friends (Deanna Beatty and Kjiersten Fagnan) on the 10th but my daughter and I decided it would be better for us to stay the night in the area on the 9th so that we could get going reasonably early on the 10th. So my daughter and I headed towards Inverness on the 9th and checked in to the Tomales Bay Resort in Inverness mid PM. We went for a walk to stretch our legs, went to our room for a bit and then decicded we had time for a brief outing to Pt. Reyes that afternoon. This was not in our original plan but we had gotten there a bit earlier than we had anticipated and, well, we were right there near Pt. Reyes so we headed on in. And it ended up being amazing.

Basically, we drove to Pierce Ranch in the Northern part of Pt. Reyes and then drove back. But on the way there and back we saw some amazing things, including three different bobcats, a bunch of coyotes, and lots of elk. Below are some more details.

The first interesting wildlife we saw was a very happy and healthy looking coyote on the side of the road as we headed towards Pierce Ranch in the North East region of Pt. Reyes.

And my favorite

I also made a gif from the series of pics I took. See below

After the coyote we continued driving North on the road towards Pierce Ranch. Along the way we saw a person pulled over on the side of the road taking pictures of something in a field to the right. And off in the field I could see a lightly colored object. We pulled over and got out of our car and off in the distance, was Bobcat #1.

Zoomed in pic:

The bobcat then got up and walked towards some bursh and I got a few more pics.

And then it took a look in my direction.

And then it was into the bushes and was gone.

Absolutely amazing. It was the first good look my daughter has ever gotten of a bobcat. We were giddy.

Basically our entire trip could have just ended and we would be happy. But this was just a taste … We got back in my car and headed off again – still going towards Pierce Ranch. On the way to and then from Pierce Ranch we got to see a few more coyotes and tons of elk. Here are some pics of the elk.

I also got a video of the big male elk leading his group across the road.

So this was amazing right? Nice bobcat sighting. Nice coyote sighting. A ton of elk. And some birds (which I am not adding here since I did not get any really good pics of them). But little did we know that there was more to come.

As we were driving back towards Inverness, close to where we saw the first bobcat, we saw a yellow / brown creature up on a hill. I pulled over, grabbed my camera (mostly to use the telephoto) and lo and behold it was another bobcat.

It then started walking down the hill towards us.

It then took a break and sat down for a while, groomed, sniffed a bit, and was even divebombed by a raven or crow.

And then it headed down the hill getting a bit closer to us.

And then it sat down again.

And I guess it could have stopped here. But this was not by any means the end of our bobcat encounter. Right then my daughter said, excitedly, something like “Oh my god – there is another bobcat.” And she pointed out where it was a bit down the hill from this one. Maybe 30 feet away or so. So I then took some pics of that one.

I then thought – I should try to get a pic with both of them in it – but my 500 mm lens was too large for that. So I deciced to take a bunch of pics panning from one bobcat to the other. I then stitched them together in Adobe Lightroom and this is what I got.

The third bobcat (the one below) started to move so I took some pics of it as it headed off into the brush.

And then the other bobcat started moving again. It was not clear if they were “together” but they clearly were aware of each other. So I took some more pics of course.