On a SLO Saturday morning with a breakfast at the Copper Cafe at the Madonna Inn (celebrity sighting: Steve Perry), Grasshopper and I headed out west past the Men’s Colony to do some birding-hiking-sketching at Morro Rock.

The 581 foot tall Morro Rock is a volcanic plug on California’s coast. A volcanic plug is the extinct neck of a volcano. It is a prominent landform that is a beacon for wildlife. The extinct volcano formed about 23 million years ago.

We birded around the rock. Avian highlights included white-throated swift, Bewick’s wren with common loons on Morro Bay and willets, black oystercatchers, and brown pelicans on the breakwater.

Around the base of the rock were “No Climbing” signs because Morro Rock is a peregrine falcon reserve. On our visit there were no signs of peregrine falcons.

We left the trailhead and found a sketching perspective with Morro Bay in the foreground and found a sketching boulder to sketch from (featured sketch).