Elfin Forest Activities

By Jean Wheeler

When parking near the Elfin Forest while visiting, please avoid blocking driveways or mailboxes.

January 8 - Weed Warriors

The volunteer work party known as the "Weed Warriors" will meet from 9 am to about noon.  Anyone is welcome to join in and help pull obnoxious invading weeds and work on projects to reduce erosion. Wear comfortable shoes, long pants and sleeves, and park at the north end of 15th Street in Los Osos.

January 15,9:30 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 tracks 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.

Coming Up in the Elfin Forest

This is the month for birding on and around Morro Bay.  Often the water of the estuary seems nearly covered by grebes, pelicans, cormorants, ducks, geese, sandpipers, gulls, terns, and other wading, swimming, and diving species.  Virtually all species of water birds and wading birds normally seen in the course of a year from Bush Lupine Point or Siena's View are present and at peak populations on Morro Bay in January.  

Besides water birds, all the raptors and most of the passerines normally seen in our area are also at or near peak populations.  The shrubs around the boardwalk can be alive with flitting finches, sparrows, warblers, wrens, bushtits, and many other little brown and little grey birds.  Of course our resident birds are here, with young from the past year joining the adults.  These "regulars," plus so many birds here to escape the cold and scarce food of winter in their nesting territories to the north, explain why the Morro Bay Winter Bird Festival is held annually over Martin Luther King weekend.  Watch for hummingbirds busily gathering nectar as they pollinate the red tubes of fuchsia-flowering gooseberries. Among the not-so-little birds of the brush are phoebes, thrashers, towhees, Scrub Jays, quail, blackbirds, and doves.

Boardwalk Buckbrush

California Poppy

Two years in a row with rain early and often—our Elfin Forest vegetation is lucky again this year, and so are we!

The glorious floral response is already well under way.  With the frequent showers of Christmas week soaking deeply into the sandy soil, the display in January will still be vibrant with the reds of fuchsia-flowering gooseberry and California peonies. The boardwalk will be surrounded with the lush white, pink, and lavender colors of Morro manzanita and buckbrush ceanothus (our local species of California lilac). Look also for lovely low-growing colorful wildflowers such as blue-dicks, golden yarrow, and California poppies. The poppies are usually more yellow than orange this close to the coast.  The species darkens to orange inland.

Enjoy the floral beauty of the Elfin Forest and take pictures to arouse the envy of your friends and relatives in northern and eastern states.  Their snow and ice may be beautiful to see, but we can enjoy the beauty of our small wilderness area in much more comfortable temperatures and arrive via much less hazardous walking, bicycling or driving conditions!

Spotted Towhee image on banner by Jean Wheeler.