December 1: 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.
Third Saturday Walk
December 15: 9:30-11:30 a.m. Lichens and Beyond
Join local naturalist Al Normandin for this end-of-the-year walk that will introduce us to the Elfin Forest's lichens and ferns. They are often outshone earlier in the year by the floral display in the Forest. We'll learn fascinating details about the ecology and diversity of the numerous lichens that can be seen along the boardwalk. We'll also take a look at the remaining late-season flowers that are still blooming. Only a heavy rain will cancel this walk.
Coming Up in the Elfin Forest
Mild winter temperatures combine with the onset of winter rains to accelerate the pace of life in the Elfin Forest. Many of the earliest flowers of each new winter season open in December, fueled by a few early rains in October and November.
Buckbrush ceanothus is one of the earliest flowering shrubs. Widespread in the Elfin Forest, its flowers are white to very pale lavender, not the vivid blue of ceanothus species known as California lilacs growing wild elsewhere in the state or as garden cultivars. The bright red, trumpet-shaped flowers of fuchsia-flowered gooseberries cluster along branches with small green leaves and lots of sharp thorns, making this shrub easy to spot and very appropriate to the holiday season. Look closely to find California peonies growing barely a foot high under the edges of bushes in the dune scrub or maritime chaparral. These natives are herbaceous plants with large green leaves and small reddish flowers hanging down, not the large mounds with big showy flowers of garden fame.
Flying ornaments flitting among the shrubs around the boardwalk include finches, sparrows, warblers, wrens, bushtits, and many other little yellow, brown, or gray birds. Watch for the bright red throats and heads of hummingbirds busily gathering nectar as they pollinate the red tubes of those fuchsia-flowered gooseberries. Among the not-so-little avian ornaments of the brush are phoebes, thrashers, towhees, scrub jays, northern mockingbirds, quail, blackbirds, and doves.
Marbled Godwit
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American Wigeons
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Virtually all of the water birds and wading birds seen in our area at any time of year reach peak populations here in winter, as do all our raptors.
Brant Geese
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From Bush Lupine Point or Siena's View you can use your binoculars (perhaps a new holiday gift?) to identify Mallards, Northern Pintails, Gadwalls, American and Eurasian Wigeons, Northern Shovelers, Teal (Blue-winged, Cinnamon, and Green-winged), and Scaup among the dabbling ducks. Or there are the diving birds, including Ring-Necked, Canvasback, Bufflehead, Common Goldeneye, Red-breasted Merganser, and Ruddy Ducks as well as Horned, Eared, Pied-billed, Western, and Clark's Grebes. The large geese with black heads and necks are called Brant, and a few thousand winter on Morro Bay after breeding in the Arctic in summer. Birds that can be seen wading along the shore include Sandpipers, Dowitchers, Long-billed Curlews, Marbled Godwits, and American Avocets.
Take a walk on the wild side this holiday season in El Moro Elfin Forest, which is protected all year every year by the hard-working volunteers of SWAP, Small Wilderness Area Preservation. For more information or to volunteer, leave a message on SWAP's answering machine, 528-0392.
Gooseberry
