Coming Up in the Elfin Forest

By Jean Wheeler

Mild winter temperatures combine with the onset of winter rains to accelerate the pace of life in the Elfin Forest in December and January. The leaves greening up from the three inches of rain we received in that unusually generous early storm in October got us off to a great start, and should allow plants to produce plenty of food for an excellent floral display.

Fuchsia-flowered gooseberry

Among the earliest flowering plants of each new season are the fuchsia-flowered gooseberries (pictured). The bright red color of the fuchsia-shaped flowers clustered along branches with small green leaves and lots of sharp thorns make this shrub easy to spot. You have to look more closely to find our wild peonies, another early bloomer, growing barely a foot high under bushes in the dune scrub or maritime chaparral. These California natives are small herbaceous plants with small reddish flowers hanging down, not the large mounds with big showy flowers of garden fame. Buckbrush ceanothus also comes into bloom during these months. A shrub widespread in the Elfin Forest, its flowers are white to very pale lavender, not the vivid blue of species known as California Lilacs growing wild elsewhere in the state or as garden cultivars. The California toyon is also a shrub but grows only in protected areas sheltered by dunes along the lower boardwalk near the Siena’s View intersection. It may still have red berries on it in December, which account for a common name of Christmas berry, but with the early deep rains it will probably begin to bloom in January.

Northern mockingbird

Our area is known as one of the top birding locales in our country, especially in these winter months when diversity of birds and populations of many (it's tempting to say most) species are at a peak for the year. That's why Morro Coast Audubon sponsors the Morro Bay Winter Bird Festival in January each year. Virtually all of the water birds and wading birds listed in our Pocket Guide (sold on page 11) are at peak populations in these two months. So are all the raptors listed, and a great many of the passerines. The shrubs around the boardwalk can be alive with flitting finches, sparrows, warblers, wrens, bushtits, and many other little brown and little grey birds. Watch for the hummingbirds busily gathering nectar as they pollinate the red tubes of those fuchsia-flowered gooseberries. Among the not-so-little birds of the brush are phoebes, thrashers, towhees, scrub jays, northern mockingbirds (pictured), quail, blackbirds, and doves.