A Visit to Carrizo Plain National Monument

Saturday, April 4, 2020

Cindy had wonderful memories of visiting Carrizo Plain National Monument last year, when it supported a super bloom. She wanted to go back and visit there again for her Saturday outing. We knew it had the public parts closed so there would be relatively few people in the area, with 250,000 acres to spread out in. Indeed, we saw only a few other vehicles before 10:30 A.M. And lest then twenty- five over the course of the day.

Horned lark- one of the abundant species we saw

Common Goldfields (Lasthenia gracilis), interspersed with tidy tips and 

redstem filaree (Erodium cicutarium), an invasive weed

When we got to the closed Visitor Center, we saw three other groups of people, so decided to not walk the small loop trail that Cindy thought she could handle. But the road just outside it, gave us two of our best times. We watched a hawk and a prairie falcon fight repeatedly, as the prairie falcon attempted to chase off the hawk. And we totally enjoyed watching a San Joaquin antelope squirrel feed and pose for us.

The San Joaquin antelope squirrel posing

Cindy caught one of the several skirmishes - the prairie falcon- above - buzzed the hawk sitting on the post and the hawk responded by jumping up, turning over and presenting his claws

The prairie falcon then took a break on a power line post near the car before doing another fly over

We also spent a lot of time looking for Bell's sparrow, which is endemic there. We finally took a side road where Cindy remembered finding then last year and found a fe. I got one to sit close enough to get its's picture. This was a lifer for me.

Bell's Sparrow

We continued to work our way through the  refuge from northwest to southeast, along the Calliente Range, then turned to head towards the Temblor Range, eventually turning back northwest to drive along it. We continued to stop at Cindy's or my whims to take pictures. I had about 700 at the end of the day. Severe editing has about 100 saved.

The area used to hold lots of ranches - these tanks are probably the remains of one ranch

I glimpsed the orange/white pattern of pronghorn antelope and we slowed to get closer to them, stopping repeatedly to take pictures. We think this group of five were probably yearlings as they were very curious and looked young. They came closer to us after we stopped to watch them. We probably spent twenty minutes with them and took a few hundred pictures between us.

These are the fastest land animals in the Americas - can reach speeds of 53 mph

Their large eyes let them see danger from far away

Earlier this morning, when Cindy and I were moving our cars so we could take hers, she decided she could drive and did ALL the driving of at least one hundred twenty-five miles. But I did a lot more of jumping in and out of the car in search of the best picture angles and close-ups. 

Cindy shooting me deciding how to compose a picture.....

.....of San Joaquin milk vetch setting beautiful red seed after its yellow flowers - Soda Lake visible in background in front 

Cindy, preparing to take her main walk of the day - and stopping to read about the San Andreas fault - just before the brown at the top of the screen. It said this area is moving towards San Francisco at the rate of 1.34 inches per year -
in only 10,000 years, it will be there. 

Afternoon clouds made for better landscape pictures - we also had to contend with heat waves

While the winds made dust devils

On the way home, Cindy stopped at Shell Creek Road, a famous wildflower viewing area. It did not disappoint and we spent another hour or so there.

Common Hillside Daisy (Monolopia lanceolata)

Tidy tips (Lavia Platyglossa) with a honeybee visitor

Tidy tips with small lupines

I got really excited - have not found ANY native bees around - but this turned out to be just another syrphid

Baby blue-eyes - one of the rarest of the flowers we saw. 

Coastal Bush Lupine (Lupinus propinquus)

                     

Just as the flowers ran out, we ran into a flock of returning  western kingbirds - we probably saw twenty - fifty

A view near our turnaround point on the road

These forays out to spend time in the outdoors are the BEST preventatives and immune boosters. I hope you too, are getting out.