Walking while (overly) aware

I wonder how many people have passed this live oak in Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve over the years without pulling knives on it and inviting pathogens for a picnic? Weak appeals to tradition could be made to justify new arborglyphs, none of which hold much water when we’re talking about trees in nature preserves; what these clowns did is no Chumash “scorpion tree.”

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There’re still flowers to see in San Diego other than invasive mustard and ice plants despite our minimal rainfall over the winter. I enjoy the hunt.

brownspined pricklypear (Cylindropuntia californica var. parkeri), Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve

red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus), Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve

lanceleaf liveforever (Dudleya lanceolata), Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve

coyote (Canis latrans), Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve

climbing milkweed (Funastrum cynanchoides var. hartwegii), Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve

San Diego barrel cactus (Ferocactus viridescens var. viridescens) with pink sand verbena (Abronia umbellata), Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve

sacred datura (Datura wrightii), Torrey Pines State Beach

San Diego goldenstar (Bloomeria clevelandii), Louis Stelzer County Park

delicate clarkia (Clarkia delicata), Louis Stelzer County Park

San Bernardino larkspur (Delphinium parryi), Louis Stelzer County Park

A cherrypicked view from Kumeyaay Promontory at Louis Stelzer County Park sans enormous powerlines.

This is on the way to our trash and recycling bins. I suppose it's my version of a container garden. It started a couple of years ago with some Calorchortus weedii var. intermedius bulbs from Telos Rare Bulbs. Wildlife kept eating the emerging leaves, so I chucked in some Opuntia prolifera cladodes that had fallen from the one I planted at the end of the driveway. The Eschscholzia californica is a volunteer from elsewhere in the yard. Maybe next spring will finally be the year for that C. weedii.

Northern harrier

I'd have thought I was watching a short-eared owl hunting if I didn't know our birds of prey fairly well. Their methods are similar and northern harriers have a pretty flat, owlish face for a hawk. They seem to really like Lopez Canyon which connects to our canyon and don't appear to be as bothered by the established invasive mustard as I am. An enormous striped skunk was foraging busily nearby and the hawk did take a brief look, but who in their right mind would tackle that?!

This would make a fitting profile shot for me if I were still able to stomach social media.

Long Shadows in Lopez Canyon. Transparent watercolor and powdered soft pastel on 300lb hot press paper. 15" x 19" (38 x 48cm).

Here’s a slope cleared for the purpose of creating defensible space for a home backing up to Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve. Nature abhors a vacuum and the invasive plants that renew annually take hold and reseed heavily when we don’t stay ahead of them. I spend more time than I’d like weeding in order to keep the worst of them at bay. At least it’s “yoga” in the company of wildlife with the scent of my Cleveland sages and others nearby to cheer me on.

I can’t mention Hawaiian short-eared owls without including a shot of one soaring within a Haleakalā National Park cloud. These are moments one never forgets.

Nature to the rescue

This isn’t the same pair of great horned owls as was shown mating in a recent post of mine. They also live in Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve here in San Diego about a mile west of the others, though I suppose they’re still slumming it in the eyes of some owls since they live east of the 5. Years ago, I was able to come to the conclusion that this isn’t the same pair as the other one by being present for their evening wake up routines at the same time on different days on multiple occasions. I'd not visited this pair in awhile. Their territory is farther from the house with a rockier walk up and out left to contend with in the dark which was done last night while listening to the hauntingly beautiful sound of howling coyotes. I also try to see the closer pair more often because I’d like to figure out where they choose to nest, if indeed they do, and if it’s in a spot I can observe without venturing off trail or onto private property.

We were fortunate to see this male sail silently over our heads and land in a distant tree where he began hooting to his mate. She flew out from deep in the woods along the creek to a spot in a bare California sycamore. They followed each other into inaccessible darkness after a brief duet.

This is the male great horned owl. He has deeper hoots than she does.

That’s the female.

Zooming out, you can see them in their respective perches here. I was shooting with a 100-400mm telephoto lens and keeping my distance from them so as not to impact their behavior.

It left with me.

With so little else open during this pandemic, our local preserves and state parks are getting even more trashed than usual. These spaces were set aside first and foremost to protect the remnants of what was here after people began bulldozing land for our sprawling homes, office parks and large scale agriculture. It’s possible to recreate in them and celebrate their beauty while treating them with respect, but that requires thinking about the consequences of our actions. Discarding plastic, cigarette butts and tearing up narrow trails made more fragile by winter rains and heavy fog threatens the plants and wildlife that live within these areas. They have no other homes to retreat to.

This wintry sunset in beautiful Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve required no editing in Photoshop.

Prints of this photograph may be purchased by clicking on the image.

Happy New Year. Thanks for your continued emotional and financial support of living artists, any living artist. I’d say 2021 can’t be any worse than what we’ve just experienced, but entropy is clearly still a thing.

—Robin Street-Morris

California kingsnake

I was thrilled to see this California kingsnake (Lampropeltis californiae) heading across a trail in Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve. Had I not been looking down, I could have easily stepped on it or put the front wheel of one of my bikes across its back. Flattened animals and plants are situations I encounter in our San Diego preserves all too often. I stuck around until it made its way safely across.