The California That Once Was: The San Luis National Wildlife Refuge

Great Blue Heron at the entrance to the San Luis NWR

I live in an extraordinary place, a place that does not always receive the respect that it deserves. In much the same way that travelers refer to the Midwest as "fly-over states", my home is the "drive-through valley".  The Great Valley (called by some the Central Valley) is a 400 mile long and 50 mile wide province that must be traversed by Southern Californians who want to reach the Pacific Northwest, or coastal Californians who want to reach Yosemite National Park or the Sierra Nevada ski resorts.

San Luis National Wildlife Refuge from above. It lies on the floodplain of the San Joaquin River.

Many people find the journey an arduous exercise in white-line fever, an endless flat region covered by millions of acres of orchards and fields of crops, or cattle stockyards, or used car lots on the edges of poor-looking towns. I'm willing to grant that it is often not a pretty sight. There is a reason that our cities often wind up last on the lists of "best places to live". Our skies are often the most polluted in the United States.

In the thirty years that I've lived here, I've come to discover a different Great Valley. It's the five percent of the valley that still retains the character of the land that existed before it was co-opted by agricultural development. It's a recurrent theme of my blogging adventures because each of these adventures expands my world just a little bit.

Today's journey was the auto-tour through the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. The refuges range the length of the valley, providing winter sanctuary for migrating birds, but also providing a last stand for many native species of the valley from the smallest of bugs to the rodents and larger grazing animals to the largest remaining predators, the eagles, the hawks, the coyotes and foxes, and sometimes even mountain lions. The gigantic herds of Tule Elk and Bison have been gone for more than a century, although the elk are protected as a species in some of the refuges, including 60 of them at San Luis. Without the millions of grazing animals, the refuge managers allow limited grazing of the prairie by sheep and cattle to maintain the integrity of the grasslands. I imagined the scene above as a wolf patrolling the margins of a giant herd grazing elk, looking for a weak or sick individual to take down. The reality was the opposite, of course. The dog was watching over the sheep.

I don't see them often, but Mule Deer do inhabit the grasslands. We saw nearly a dozen of them today. I've mostly given up on trying to take decent pictures, but I really liked this one.

Red-tailed Hawk at the San Luis NWR

The stars of the refuge are the myriads of bird species that call them home. Some of them only stay for a few days or a few months as part of a long migration, while others stay year-round. Each refuge includes a wide range of habitats, including freshwater marshes, riparian areas (river channels), prairie grasslands, and alkali salt flats. The auto-tours at the refuge sample most of these environments, and several hiking trails are available as well.

In the first five miles of the tour we didn't see a great many migrant species, so I thought the Cinnamon Teal (above) and the Great Blue Heron (opening photo) that greeted us at the entrance to the refuge were going to be the avian stars of the day. But then we made the turn towards the Souza Marsh at the southeastern edge of the refuge. And everything changed in a moment. We had found the migrants.

There were hundreds of Snow Geese, Greater White-fronted Geese, Northern Shovelers, Cinnamon Teals, Northern Pintails, Mallards, American Coots, Pied-billed Grebes, and to our great delight, several dozen Tundra Swans (I count five of the species in this picture alone). The swans aren't rare, but Mrs. Geotripper and I have only found them once before on our travels. They dwarf the other birds in the marsh.

Last year was a good year for rain, and water was plentiful after five years of drought. Most of the marshlands were flooded, providing better than normal habitat for the birds. Unfortunately, the new year is proving much drier, with a near record low snowpack in the mountains upstream, and dry conditions in the long-range forecasts. Uncertainty lies ahead.

The prairies and river environments have always existed in a cycle of drought and flood. The biggest variable in the present day and in the future is the effect of global warming on the environment here. The predictions are for more drought, although some climate models suggest more rain in some years. Unfortunately that means less snow, and more variable river flows, heavier in the spring, and far less in the summer and fall. It's hard to predict the coming changes in the ecosystem that will follow. That ecosystem of course includes the species Homo sapiens, who despite their arrogance about "ruling over nature" and all that, are just as vulnerable to climate change as the rest of the species who live here. Their one advantage is the ability to recognize the situation they are in, to provide reasonably accurate predictions about the future, and the ability to affect the outcome.

Civilization Exists By Geological Consent...So does life in the Great Valley

Sandhill Cranes at the San Luis NWR

The Sandhill Cranes are returning to their winter home in the Great Valley of California! In the next few weeks there will be 20,000 of them arriving at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge a few tens of miles south of Modesto. They will be sharing space with hundreds of thousands of other birds, including Snow Geese, Cackling Geese, Ross' Geese and many others. To many pundits, the Great Valley of California is a rotten place to live (see my comments about this from yesterday's post). But if you are a bird, the valley is next to paradise. It represents survival, and the reasons are geological.

Sandhill Cranes at the San Luis NWR

The Great Valley is 400 miles long, and around 30-40 miles wide, running from Redding at the north end to Bakersfield in the south. It is amazingly flat, with total relief of only a few hundred feet. Two major river systems, the Sacramento and San Joaquin, provide a richness of water in what would otherwise be desert or near-desert. A huge range of habitats existed here at one time, including short-grass prairies, riparian floodplains, oak woodlands, lakes, and vernal pools. Although agriculture and urban development have co-opted some 95% of the valley floor, there are still pockets of native environments remaining.

Killdeer at the Merced NWR

The valley originated as a large shallow sea called a forearc basin along the vast subduction zone that once existed across the entire west coast of North America. The convergent boundary was eventually changed, and the San Andreas transform took its place. The Coast Ranges rose in the last few million years, acting as a rain shadow, and preventing the rivers from finding an easy path to the sea. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers flow outward through the Carquinez Strait, but several other rivers, including the Kings, Tulare, and Kern, don't reach the sea. Prior to settlement and diversion of the rivers for agriculture, they ended in large shallow lakes at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley. The lakes are dry today.

Yellowlegs (Greater?) at the San Luis NWR

Though so much of the original valley habitat is gone, a few critical wetlands remain and are preserved as a string of National Wildlife Refuges. These refuges are a critical component of the migratory flyway for millions of birds. Some simply pass through, stopping long enough to eat and gather energy for their long journey, but others spend the winter here, and some stay all year.

California Quail at the San Luis NWR

Many tourists pass through the Great Valley without a second thought on their way to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, or Sequoia/Kings Canyon, but at this time of year they are missing an awesome show of the variety and diversity of nature. There is nothing quite like seeing and hearing the spectacle of 10,000 geese taking off all at once. There are hundreds upon hundreds of bird species who spend at least part of the year in the valley, not to mention a rich variety of mammals, reptiles, fish and amphibians. The valley for all its problems can be a fascinating place to spend some time.

Great Blue Heron at San Luis NWR

The San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Complex includes 45,000 acres of protected lands within an hour's drive of Modesto, my home base. There are a number of hiking trails (all level, imagine that!) and several auto tours, including those at the San Luis and Merced Units where I took all of these pictures today. I think we saw or heard at least three dozen species of birds in just the four hours we spent exploring.

Northern Shovelnose at the Merced NWR

We were entranced by the hundreds of Sandhill Cranes arriving by the minute in the setting sun. The video below provides a sense of how it felt...

Don't just pass through the Great Valley on your next trip to California. Check out our valley and find out why we call it "Great". Two places to get information: the headquarters for the San Luis NWRC near Los Banos, and in a few short months, the Great Valley Museum on the west campus of Modesto Junior College. 

The title quote comes from Will Durant, and in its entirety reads "Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice".

The Other California: The Wetlands of the San Joaquin Valley, Actually Wet.

It's been a miserable year, one of the worst on record. For the last year much of California, including my home in the Great Valley, has received an amount of rain more appropriate to Death Valley than to one of the most fertile agricultural regions on the planet. It's been dry and dusty, and the farms in the valley have been surviving off of storage in the irrigation reservoirs, but after three dry years in a row, the reservoirs are on empty.

A Black-necked Stilt

In a valley where farming is king and 95% of the landscape is totally devoted to agricultural development, wildlife concerns take a back seat, especially when water runs short. The valley once hosted millions and millions of migratory birds, but during the development of the farmlands, lakes and marshes were drained and plowed, and what few birds persisted got themselves driven off or shot for consuming crops when natural forage was no longer available.

No, it's not drunk, and it's not falling over. A split second later it was airborne.

It would be nice to think that wildlife refuges were established to stabilize and preserve the original environment of the valley, but in some cases the motives were less noble: some, like the Merced National Wildlife Refuge where we visited yesterday, were designed to distract the birds from nearby farmlands where they were causing crop damage. And of course many refuges were designed to make it easier to "hunt" and shoot the birds. Whatever the original motive, their form and function has evolved. As we have come to understand the intricate nature of the migratory bird ecosystem, management of the refuges has begun to promote a stable winter home for numerous species. In some cases they have become spectacularly successful: the Merced Refuge protects 60,000 geese and 20,000 Sandhill Cranes. The refuges are managed as a complex ecosystem, with protection extended to the many other birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates.

A Black-necked Stilt and a Killdeer forage on the refuge road.

Our previous visits to the refuges (which we pretty much discovered only this year after living around here for a quarter of a century) have been dry times. Some of the fields were flooded but so little water was available. The drought has not broken, but we've finally received some rain, and on Sunday we paid a visit during a rainstorm. The birds seemed pleased, and the noise was almost deafening at times. It was delightful.

The Black-necked Stilts (Himantopus mexicanus) were especially common, and cooperated nicely with our efforts to get pictures, so they are the stars of today's post. "Stilt" is an appropriate enough name; their legs are ridiculously long, allowing them to wade in deeper water than some other birds.

There is only one Ibis in the American West, the White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi). We saw it for the first time on our last trip here, and were pleased to see it again. According to some of my guides, the bird is in decline California, primarily because of the need for large marsh areas for breeding. Those have been sorely lacking in these dry years.

They have one of the stranger looking beaks I've seen. They are obviously good for foraging deep in the mud.

Their feathers have a beautiful iridescence (that was not real obvious on this cloudy day).

The edge of the refuge include a few trees, still lacking their leaves. We were watching for raptors, but were thrilled to see a huge Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) staring at us. Actually the stare was mildly disconcerting. The curve of their brows suggests malevolence, even though none presumably exists (I hope; given that birds are the only remaining dinosaurs in the world, I shiver to think of that stare coming from a creature fifteen feet tall).

I saw a fencepost off in the distance, but realized after a moment that it was actually a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) standing very still. Another bird who cooperated nicely as we snapped a few pictures.

It is such an elegant looking bird!

We couldn't get very close to the vast flocks of Ross' Geese, Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes, but we could see thousands of them off in the distance. The picture below is just part of the main grouping of Sandhill Cranes. The managers grow several hundred acres of corn on the refuge to feed the birds and give them full stomachs for the long flight north to their breeding grounds.

We stayed until the sun disappeared below the horizon in a beautiful sunset. This is the Great Valley at its best; I have been guilty of thinking of my home grounds as boring, bereft of geological interest and lacking much of anything resembling a natural environment that recalls the days following the last ice ages when wooly mammoths and dire wolves roamed the prairies, along with horses, camels, elk, bison, antelope, and saber-tooth cats. But here in the setting sun, with the cacophony of hundreds of thousands of birds, I felt a sense of how it once was before we "improved" the land.

The western sky was graced with a beautiful thin crescent moon.

The "Other California" is my long-neglected blog series on the places in my beautiful state that are often missed  by travelers from outside the region, especially those that tell a geological story. Toyota stole my idea, actually. I've never seen a tour bus full of foreign tourists stop at any of these refuges, but I imagine the sight of tens of thousands of geese soaring into the sky would be a sight that would impress any California visitor. And in the American West, the story of such a flat place, full of wetlands and marshes, is truly unusual, considering the geological violence that has occurred throughout the region, raising vast mountain ranges and high plateaus. The diversity of our landscapes, and the wide diversity of our native species is truly stunning.

Note: The San Joaquin Valley noted in the title is the name given the southern half of the Great Valley, from about Stockton to Bakersfield.

Birds of My Neighborhood: Geotripper Explores a Bit of the "Original" Great Valley

In the last few weeks I've been documenting the bird species in my local neighborhood, primarily around the cow pasture that sits a few blocks from my house. Much to my surprise, I was able to identify at least 25 different birds in a few days of walking, and I blogged some of my favorite pictures so far (here and here).

A cow pasture and an urban neighborhood feel a bit out of place, like an environment where the species make do, and opportunistic species like crows, pigeons and starlings dominate. We decided to go looking for birds in a more "natural" setting and headed south to the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. We were greeted by the hawk on the entrance sign.

I say "natural" in quotes, because the refuge is not exactly a section of of the valley that retains its primeval wilderness nature. There are very few of those areas still in existence. It is instead an effort to return some reclaimed agricultural lands to wetlands status, and the location and pattern of the swamps is carefully regulated to encourage natural plant growth to allow the migratory and native birds to flourish. In essence the refuge is farming birds. That sounds kind of negative, but it's not meant that way. The wetlands stops on the Pacific Flyway have been decimated by agricultural and urban development, and this is a great effort to undo some of the damage.

We headed out a short looping auto tour off of Landers Road and slowly made our way down the dirt road. The swamps had recently been flooded, and birds were all over, although they tended to be rather shy. A great many of our shots are at extreme zoom.

The American Coots (Fulica americana) were present in abundance. They seemed the least disturbed by our intrusion.

There was a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) in the reeds, but I only got a few shots before it headed deeper into the marsh.

I think the bird below is a Say's Phoebe (Sayornis saya) that lurked in the low weeds and grass at the edge of the capabilities of my camera. With the distinctive orange belly I thought it was a robin at first.

 The bird below may be a sandpiper or willet (any assistance appreciated!).

And finally I got a few shots of the most common bird that we could see that  day, the Red-winged Blackbird. This pair was kind of meek about showing off their red plumage...

 But the one below had no problem!