[CINC] Great day hike on Santa Rosa!

[Catherine French]

Ditto on Tara's comments for Fridays's excursion. It was a great trip around the south side of SCI after we landed at Scorpion with overnight volunteer Kathy Van Slyke and Mike Sos for the VC duties. Diane Rennell onboard and heading to SMI for weekend duties there, and I was lucky enough to have the weekend duties on SRI>

The approximate elk and deer count came from Ranger Mark Senning who was leaving the island as we were arriving. It is a very approximate count. The 9 horses left on the island were seen by campers that went with me to Carrington Point on Sunday. They were crazy together in Lobo Pasture. Beautiful old horses that get to leave out their remaining years on their home turf. A great reward I think for all the years they worked the ranch. The hunt will end this year and end quite an era with it with elk on the island from about 1909 and the deer from 1929.

At Carrington we saw two Steller sea lions and hundreds of younger California sea lions and spotted harbor seals. One camper later that day saw a sea lion give birth. I believe it was a Cal sea lion. I briefly got a glimpse of a mature bald eagle (tag not visible to me) flying over the point as I was coming down the last hill.

The island is alive with color, I can't remember a year in the past 11 for me, with so many flowers in bloom. Lots of lupine, sand verbena, red maidens, red and SCI buckwheat, poppies, dudleya, etc. It was so beautiful visitors were amazed a the profusion of color.

We did see 20 or more dead blue belly lizards (western fence lizards) on the road toward East Point. I asked Ranger Lulis Cuevas about it and she thought it might be the loggerhead shrikes. I will look further into it, as it seemed so odd.

For the first time in my years of going out to SRI, there were multiple sightings of SRI foxes. Fox sightings have been extremely rare. One of the cute critters went flying across the Coast Road as I was driving toward the camp ground. He was doing his Rocky the Squirrel impression I think as he hit the ground only a couple of times before literally flying through the barbed wire fence near the air strip!

On the way back on July 4, with the addition of Joel Justin on board who had led a day hike to the Torrey Pines, we encountered a medium-sized mola mola, or Pacific sun fish. And, Capt. Jimmy and crew Laurie, Steve S. and Luke had apparently picked up about 4 balloons on the way to SMI/SRI. On the way back from SRI we picked an additional 10 or so. It was a good thing, as several visitors said to me "I will never use balloons again!"

As we cruised the north side of SCI we encountered at least a thousand common dolphins with lots of babies in the mix. The trip into Painted Cave was exceptional as usual (kind of an oxymoron). But Jimmy did a grand job and everyone was impressed!





Calm Seas,
 
Catherine French
Writer, mentor, naturalist
805.570.0432
To own is to have; to share with friends, is to enjoy.




-----Original Message-----
From: TARA BROWN <tara_brown_sb at yahoo.com>
To: CINC rain list <channel_islands_naturalist_corps at rain.org>
Sent: Sat, Jul 2, 2011 8:14 am
Subject: [CINC] Great day hike on Santa Rosa!



Yesterday, the Captain Jimmie piloted the Island Adventure to ESCI, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel to drop off campers for the holiday week-end.
 
100 commons going
50 commons on the way back
 
We had ten day folks for Santa Rosa, and I led six people to the Torrey Pines.  I told everyone how fortunate we are to have this experience, since the dock is almost complete (the beach landing is a thrill!) and the Vail and Vickers lease is almost over.  Catherine French said there are still 300 elk and deer on the island, but we didn't see any on the ridge.  Afterwards, Captain Jimmie drove us deep into Painted Cave --- and he turned the boat around inside the cave!
 
Best wishes,
Tara Brown


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