California Fauna: Clergy and Choir Stall Seat Cushions Click here for general background information on this series. Pastorale (Point Reyes, northwestern San Francisco Bay Area) Place cursor on image to see numbers, which refer to numbers in caption below.   65. Red-tailed hawk taking flight; 66. Tule elk buck and two does, one seated on grass covered slope with three birds (silhouette) flying; 67. Bush lupine; 68. Red-winged blackbird on twig, bush lupine. Northwest of San Francisco is the Point Reyes Peninsula, a protected National Seashore, on the western side of the San Andreas Fault. Drake's Bay was the site of Francis Drake's 1579 landing among the Coast Miwok people. The peninsula's ocean cliffs give way to estuaries, grasslands, forested hills, protected bays and wetlands. Dunlin and threatened snowy plover patrol beaches, while swallows dig cliff burrows. Threatened riparian brush rabbits scamper through lupine thickets where sparrows sing from bush tops. Reintroduced tule elk gather on windy grass slopes where bobcats chase cottontails. A mountain beaver digs a streamside burrow as a cedar waxwing picks berries. In a sheltered estuarine marsh, turtles and frogs avoid hunting marsh birds. Raptors circle in the warm air over valley grassland.