Best places to view winter wildlife in Monterey County

While most of Monterey and Carmel’s summer guests arrive by car, winter brings an impressive number of travelers by air and sea: migratory wildlife, ranging in size from delicate monarch butterflies to sturdier-winged ducks and seabirds, on up to massive gray whales, whose trajectories sometimes overlap with those of humpbacks.

These spectacular creatures in turn attract adventurous humans who don’t mind braving cooler (and occasionally rainy) days to see them in their winter haunts.

[...] even on the most inclement of days, indoor exhibitions and visitor centers can offer intriguing insights into their journeys here.

“Some could be coming as far away as British Columbia, some could have been hanging out in Salinas or the Central Valley,” explained Allison Watson, education programs manager for the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.

Weather and volunteers permitting, museum docents will be on hand at the sanctuary from noon to 3 daily — the peak period for butterfly activity — through February.

Ten blocks away, the natural history museum provides year-round guaranteed viewing in its Monarch Gallery, with an entire room devoted to the butterfly, famed for its long migrations and short life spans — a month or so in summer, six to eight months in winter, according to Watson.

“Not only do we have great videos that show the monarch in different phases of its life cycle, we have a native butterfly chrysalis receiving room,” she added.

The monarch butterflies that hatch out of them are not released into the wild, so if it’s pouring rain at the sanctuary, you can come into the museum and at least see a couple there.

Winter, however, brings particularly intriguing shorebirds, seabirds and ducks, according to Tricia Wilson, visitor center associate at the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve in Watsonville.

The reserve offers a free birding tour along boardwalk trails at 8:30 a.m. the first Saturday of the month, along with other general tours on weekends.

Kayaks may provide an even better bird’s-eye view of the slough; Monterey Bay Kayaks offers both rentals and guided kayak tours, including several in December focused on birding.

A wildlife viewing station on the deck of the Monterey Bay Aquarium has scopes and binoculars that allow visitors to see “a remarkable number” of species, said Jim Covel, the aquarium’s director of guest experience.

The rhinoceros auklet, related to the puffin, develops facial markings and what appears to be a horn during its winter stay in the area, while the fulmar resembles a dark brown seagull, but with a feature known as a tubenose.

The aquarium viewing deck is also a place to spy a “passing parade” of marine mammals, Covel said, from year-round otters, seals and sea lions to migrating whales — and a few that may have decided to stay.

Kate Spencer, captain and naturalist with Fast Raft Ocean Safaris, says it’s very likely a number of humpbacks will stay in the bay through 2016.

Gray whales, though, remain the season’s prime attraction, with about 22,000 — nearly all of the global population — of the 30- to 40-ton leviathans passing within 2 miles of the coast on their way south from the Bering Sea.

Spencer said she has already spotted “a few gray whales sneaking by” during the eco-friendly tours she leads on a six-passenger, rigid-hull inflatable craft out of Moss Landing and Monterey.

On some tours, she’ll head as far south as Point Lobos State Natural Reserve — another great vantage point for wildlife viewing from the shore.

“We’re seeing things we almost never see in the bay, like bluefin tuna, so we may see some wildlife that we never expect at all,” he said.

Free admission to visitor center; $4 (credit card only) for ages 16 and older to walk trails (younger free).

Fast Raft Ocean Safaris, 32 Cannery Row, Suite F2 (inside boatyard, second floor), Monterey.