Describe your perfect day in Bodega Bay.

Any kind of outdoor exploration, any kind of learning that expands my appreciation and understanding of place. Anything that connects me to where we live and work.

Where is your favorite place to eat in Bodega Bay and why?

Well, I love spending time outside, and after a walk or outdoor activity, I’m usually interested in a snack. I’m happy with a granola bar and a piece of fresh fruit from a local farmers market. There’s nothing like eating a ripe peach next to the ocean, but I’m not opposed to a treat from the Tomales Bakery or a scone from Wild Flour Bread in Freestone either!

Where would you take first-time visitors in Bodega Bay?

I’d take them for a walk, probably on Bodega Head. The trail that follows the southern end of Bodega Head provides a chance to see whales. There are amazing views of Point Reyes and Tomales Bay. Looking across the harbor to town, you can watch the fishing boats and think about Bodega Bay’s history and how lucky we are that people have cared about this part of the coast for so long.

What do you know about Bodega Bay that others don’t?

There are so many different habitats in Bodega Bay that I think you could go out every day—on foot or on the water—and see something new. Take your pick: a sandy beach, sand dunes, a coastal bluff, coastal prairie, the tidal flats, a salt marsh, an eelgrass meadow, rocky tide pools, the open ocean. We’re very fortunate to live in a part of the world where there’s such incredibly high species diversity.

If you could change one thing about Bodega Bay what would it be?

There’s no doubt that it would be easier to live here if everything was cheaper. But money aside, if I had a magic wand, I’d create a “town square” where community members and visitors could gather, a space that would encourage people to spend some time outside and to check in with each other.

Jackie Sones is a marine biologist at the Bodega Bay Marine Reserve and writes the excellent ‘Natural History of Bodega Bay’ blog at bodegahead.blogspot.com.

Alfred Hitchcock made dozens of films over a half-century-plus movie career, but the one everyone talks about in Bodega Bay is, of course, The Birds, his 1963 spine-tingler about murderous birds which was filmed in town and provides a cultural signpost to visitors here.

The freaking crows are everywhere you look in Bodega Bay, and the Hitchcock-honoring Birds Café is where you go for chowder and fish tacos and to soak up the foggy scene in a properly Hitchcockian manner. Put on the voyeur lens and pan out: the restaurant was once a garage featured in the movie.

The Birds arrived on American screens at the end of what, viewed in retrospect, is an especially incredible period in Hitchcock’s career—just a few years removed from Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho.

For my money, The Birds stands up to those classics, as I still can remember watching the movie on the old black-and-white TV at grandma’s in the early 1970s and getting totally freaked out when the murderous black birds arrive on the scene, silently awaiting a victim to emerge from her home. Don’t do it, Tipi!

It’s bone-chilling stuff which makes me wonder: How might one experience other Hitchcockian vibes in Bodega Bay? And, what were those darn birds in The Birds so ticked off about, anyway? The short story from which the movie is drawn does not provide answers—but the answer to this cliffhanger question appears at the end of this essay.

To that first question, if you’re looking for some Vertigo vibes to your visit, that’s easy: trek up to Bodega Head and look down, down to the rocks and the crashing surf below. Inhale the salty air and belt out the theme from High Anxiety. Now take 39 careful steps away from the cliff, and grab some lunch at Fishetarian (p12).

If Psycho is your Hitchcock referent du jour, I suggest you settle in at a choice local hotel and check out the punk rock band from New York Norman Bates and the Showerheads on YouTube—since the wi-fi is free at the Bodega Inn. And if there’s a bargain hotel in town, the Bodega Inn is it, with rooms going for about a buck-fifty a night.

True, there are a couple of other hotels in Bodega Bay where guests who are not Rich and Strange are occasionally heard to scream their heads off when confronted with steep nightly rates that cut a vacation budget like a knife through a shower curtain. The good news is there’s lots of cheap camping options up here, or perhaps a priced-out visitor to Bodega Bay will be spotted in the Rear Window making tracks south for the affordable camp spots at Doran Park.

Well, hey then, are you a visitor to Bodega Bay planning on a North by Northwest adventure? You could do worse than get on one of the several open fishing boats that run out of Bodega Bay and, generally speaking, head in that direction to the fishing grounds, from whence salmon the size of a Lifeboat are occasionally landed. If it’s fire season, who knows, maybe you’ll get chased by a DC-10 spewing red algae (hint hint: the reference to red algae is not a red herring).

Which brings us to the funny thing about The Birds. The funny thing about The Birds isn’t actually funny, but pretty ironic, given recent events in local waters that have dramatically and negatively impacted fishermen here.

According to numerous Hitchcock scholars and scientists, the murderous crows in the film were inspired by actual events that took place in Monterey Bay in 1961, when dying, sooty shearwaters started to fly headlong into people’s houses. Totally freaked people out.

Scientists eventually determined that the birds were disoriented and distressed because they’d been poisoned by domoic acid—yes, the selfsame shellfish poison that has conspired to end or otherwise limit several recent Dungeness crab seasons—and cripple the Bodega crabbing fleet in the process.

So there’s The Birds, and then there’s The Blob. Hitchcock
didn’t direct the American classic The Blob, but there was an interesting piece in the Boston Globe a few years ago where the author argued that the two movies compare favorably insofar as they render the seemingly innocuous into something horrific—sort of like if a reality show star became president or something. And, yes, indeed: there’s a big and scary blob of warm water lurking off the California coast that has fisheries experts worried that next year’s crab season could be canceled again.

Oh, it’s lurking all right. Watch those birds.