Elkhorn Slough – Hike

Hike #12 for 2025

We hiked a 2-mile loop on mostly flat gravel trails and saw 13 different species of birds!

A slough is an inlet that is sporadically filled with water and affected by high and low tides. Elkhorn slough is part of an estuary. This estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of water, where freshwater from nearby creeks and rivers mixes with saltwater from the Pacific Ocean. The resulting water is a mixture of saltwater and freshwater and therefore brackish, this creates a unique ecosystem.

My iPhone camera isn’t good enough to take pictures of most of the birds we saw, they weren’t close enough.

Here’s our birding list:

• Northern Pintail
• Great Blue Heron
• Long-billed Curlew
• Turkey vulture 
• Red-tailed Hawk
• California scrub Jay 
• Acorn woodpecker
• Mallard ducks male & female
• Great Egret
• White-faced Ibis
• Townsend’s Warbler
• European starling
• Western sandpiper

This was an impromptu, unplanned hike. I was wearing flip-flops. I do not recommend doing this hike, or any other hike for that matter, wearing flip-flops!

After our hike, we headed to Moss Landing State Beach to catch the sunset before we had to drive home the next morning.

I can’t decide which sunset photo is my favorite. Which do you prefer?