March 3: Weed Warriors
The volunteer work party will meet from 9 am to about noon. Anyone is welcome to join in and work on projects to restore vegetation and reduce erosion. Wear comfortable shoes, long pants and sleeves, and park at the north end of 15th Street in Los Osos.
March 17: 9:30 a.m. – Animal Tracks Walk
Join Evan Albright, an animal track expert, in learning who is "tracking up" the Elfin Forest. Evan will demonstrate how to tell the front feet from the back feet of a raccoon, and what the difference is between coyote and dog tracks. Visitors will learn to look for other signs that a wild resident of the Elfin Forest has passed that way, such as hairs on a fence or "scoot" marks where the animal squeezed through a fence hole. This walk will open up a complex world of the Elfin Forest's inhabitants, one that we would never suspect while walking along the boardwalk.
Besides docent-led events, visit the Elfin Forest any day to experience the quiet natural beauty of this small wilderness area. Park at the north end of any street from 11th through 17th streets off Santa Ysabel in Los Osos and take a sand path to the boardwalk or the wheel-chair accessible boardwalk entrance at 16th Street.
Spring View from the Boardwalk
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Coming Up in the Elfin Forest
Great Blue Heron
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This rainy season has provided less frequent storms with much less total rainfall than the last two winters gave us. Yet the Elfin Forest is providing a lovely floral display. Many winter blossoms linger while spring flowers are starting to open.
Buckbrush ceanothus shrubs continue to be covered with white to lavender flowers nearly all around the boardwalk. Fuchsia-flowered gooseberries still punctuate the green and white background with red sprays of their trumpet-shaped flowers. They attract Anna's Hummingbirds to harvest their nectar and provide pollination service in return. The pink floral bells of Morro manzanita are pretty much gone now, but look for the lovely little red apples that have replaced them and give manzanitas their Spanish name. Those "little apples" provide food for birds.
Sticky Monkey Flowers
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Yellow suffrutescent wallflowers and sticky monkey-flowers are adding more of that color to the nearly always present golds of California poppies, which are also increasing in numbers as early spring replaces winter. Black sage is starting to show white to lavender flowers in new pompoms at intervals along the stems, which have been punctuated with black pompoms of dried flowers since late last summer. White flowers on short herbs below the larger shrubs include pearly everlasting, popcorn flowers, and wedgeleaf horkelia.
Suffrutescent Wallflower
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March is the month that sees a major changing of the avian guard along our central coast. Many species that winter over in our area head northward and up into mountains to their summer breeding grounds, soon opening to them again as winter ice melts. Although large populations of waterbirds head north and our bay begins to look deceptively empty, closer inspection reveals that small numbers of many of those duck and wading bird species can be seen on the bay all year.
Bewick's Wren
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Some migrating species can only be seen here for a few days or weeks now or in the fall as they pass through between northern breeding grounds and winter havens in Central and South America. Look closely and you may see a Rufous or an Allen's Hummingbird refueling on Elfin Forest flowers for a few days to a week or so before continuing northward.
Also look for the return of species that nest here in our summer but winter in the tropics. For example, all five species of swallows normally leave us in winter but return around March. Hermit Thrushes here for the winter leave, but may be replaced by Swainson's Thrushes arriving from the south to breed here. And, of course, our year around resident birds are building or repairing nests and beginning to breed this year's crop of fledglings.
As you enjoy the lovely flowers of spring on a walk through the Elfin Forest, listen for the calls of male birds trying to attract mates. Soon to come will be the pleas of youngsters demanding food from their harried parents!
