On the way of my bird watching trip, an attempt to see California Condor, we stopped at Moss Landing, south of Santa Cruz, to check out the birds there. Right at the parking lot, we saw a pod of sea otters, sea lions, sea gulls, brown pelicans, and a group of terns all within a short distance. Kayakers were just starting out for their day trip. A big group of sea lions occupied the long pier dock, mostly sleepy. This is Northern California coast, at 10am, thick marine layer still covered the sky, sun was not out yet. Our birding guide Lisa just pointed at a pigeon guillemot for us to see, my first sighting of that bird. Suddenly some big splash on the pier grabbed everybody's attention. Two brown pelicans just decided to land at a section of the dock, and all the sea lions on that section simply fled and slipped into water.
Now it was a surprise for people to see sea lions flee from pelicans. To everyone's further surprise, those sea lions were not dare to go back to the dock. Two pelicans just occupied the section, with load of empty space between them. Since the long dock was already full of sea lions, those in the water were having hard time squeeze in to other section of the dock. Funny thing is, they seemed have the sense of those pillars that separated as "section", and those behind the pillars had no obligation to flee.
Some sea lions swam across to the other side of the dock, but yet to summon enough courage to climb on. They hang around like hoodlums with no place to go.
Then one pelican decided to take off. With only one left to guard the whole section of the dock, still, not one single sea lion attempted to claim back their dock space.
And that's just like that when we left. Poor sea lions.
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