Elfin Forest Activities

By Jean Wheeler

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

Saturday, June 4:  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 sturdy shoes, long pants and sleeves, and park at the north end of 15th Street in Los Osos.

Third Saturday Walk—June 18, 9:30 a.m.

Solstice Walk:  With Summer Solstice but a few days away, Bob Field will help us to understand why the longest day of the year was so important to Native Americans including the Chumash, and for that matter, to all past cultures.  As we tour the Elfin Forest, Bob will talk about how seasonal changes and the interactions of sunlight and water affect the diversity, abundance and distribution of life.  He will discuss the influence of the oceans on everything that can be seen in the Elfin Forest, and will point out a variety of plant adaptations to seasonal change.

Park at the north end of 15th Street (16th Street for wheelchairs) off Santa Ysabel in Los Osos. Walks begin on the boardwalk at the end of the 15th Street sand path.  Wear comfortable shoes, long sleeves, and pants to avoid poison oak and mosquitoes. 

Besides docent-led events, visit the Elfin Forest any day:  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

The lush springtime blooming season may be winding down, but many spring flowers such as yellow poppies and deerweed, golden sticky monkey flowers, red Indian pinks, and blue spikes of silver bush lupine continue to stand out against the green backdrop through June and into July.  Bright yellow flowers on tall spikes rising from the succulent rosettes of coastal dudleya are again plentiful this year as are the pink balls of our native cobwebby thistles.  A special treat to look for in June along the 15th Street sand trail and where it meets the boardwalk is a beautiful blue flower known as wooly star growing in low clumps on the sandy soil.  Another June treasure but seldom seen is the pale greenish-yellow rein orchid.  A few spikes of these orchids grow in the underbrush along the sand trail following the hilly crest above South Bay Boulevard.   

Cobwebby Thistle

It's time to start looking for baby birds just out of the nest and parents frantically trying to find enough food to stuff in those hungry young beaks.  Quail should be reforming into coveys after breaking up into pairs while mating and incubating. It's fun to see a few adults dashing across an open spot in the chaparral with a long line of youngsters dutifully scurrying behind them. Look for our abundant year-around resident species as well as birds here only for their summer breeding season. Commonly seen are hummingbirds, flycatchers, wrens, warblers, sparrows, thrashers, finches, scrub jays, and blackbirds.  Red-shouldered and Red-tailed Hawks patrol overhead, especially along the crests of the first dunes bordering the estuary.  No doubt they hope to lunch on some clumsy young bird that hasn't yet learned to watch the sky and stay down under cover and quiet when hawks are overhead.

The bay seems almost empty compared to the rafts of ducks and geese of winter, now flown north to their breeding areas, but look closely and you'll see there are still a lot of water birds around.  For many species of ducks and shorebirds, some individuals remain all year or even arrive to nest here after vacationing for the winter farther south. Among waders, Willets and Killdeer remain very common. Also resident all year are Great Blue and Black-crowned Night Herons, along with many Snowy and Greater Egrets.

The Elfin Forest remains a colorful and active small wilderness area, home to plants and animals that thrive even well after the end of the winter rains.

Unless otherwise attributed, all photos, including the Spotted Towhee banner image, are taken by Jean.