Greetings!

After last week’s essay about the Acorn Woodpeckers, at least one person asked the obvious question – “With all those acorns, where are the squirrels?”  Well, here’s one of them!

This is a California Ground Squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi).  They rarely wander far from their burrows, but, like this one, they can become quite used to humans, who may bring food.  We did not offer it anything, but it was so friendly it was quite difficult to back away far enough to get a decent picture!

We saw the squirrel at a beach just north of San Simeon, where we had gone one afternoon to check out reports of a Northern Elephant Seal colony.  Having been disappointed so many times in the past after going to places that were supposed to offer interesting wildlife, my expectations were not very high, and having parked the car we approached the (low) cliff edge expecting to peer off into the distance and maybe catch a glimpse of one or two, but was I ever wrong!

Spread out almost literally at our feet were dozens – if not hundreds – of them!  According to the informative signage along the footpath, at this time of year (late October) most adults are still far out at sea, and the individuals on the beach are mainly juveniles.  This next picture, CPT105, shows just how close to the parking lot and footpath they are!

While we were there, most of the Elephant Seals (Mirounga angustrirostris) were either asleep or lazily flipping sand over themselves, but a few would decide to take to the water or indulge in what might have been play or mock fighting (after all they are juveniles, and boys will be boys).

The cove where we saw these individuals is one of several coves stretching over some six miles of coast around Piedras Blancas.  More information about this colony and these amazing animals can be found at sites such as http://www.elephantseal.org/ .

After watching the squirrel and the seals, we decided to continue driving northwards along the Pacific Coast Highway (aka Route 1).  We knew that a massive landslide had blocked the road earlier this year just south of Gorda, but I really wanted to get a taste for what the Big Sur Country actually looks like.  This picture (looking south) was taken just after we noticed that the light was starting to fail.

We did not see a location sign at the pull-off where we parked.  However, a careful review of Google Earth, and images posted on it, lead me to believe that we were right on the border between San Luis Obispo County and Monterey County.  This also ties-in nicely with a picture in the Wikipedia entry on Big Sur – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sur – (almost identical to my picture) identifying it as being close to San Carpoforo Creek, which is “considered to be the southern boundary of Big Sur.”  So I can check another item off my bucket list!

Having achieved this objective, we wanted to check-out the lighthouse at Piedras Blancas, and find a good spot to watch the sunset.  It turns out the lighthouse (which is under restoration) is only open at limited times, and sits at the end of a gated road.  However, we did find a place where we could see it in silhouette

and then we caught the sun setting between two of the smaller Piedras Blancas.

To get that picture, I had to walk rather swiftly along a pathway leading south from the very southern end of the parking lot where our afternoon adventure had started!

Note how the visual shape of the sun’s disc has been distorted by atmospheric refraction.  I had hoped I might see the elusive “green flash”, but that is still a bucket-list thing.

 

As a footnote to this post (whose title is, of course, a tribute to The Mamas and The Papas), I want to explain that my interest in the Big Sur Country began back in about 1970 when I heard the incredibly amazing British DJ John Peel play a track by an obscure (even then) artist called Rabbit MacKay.  I tracked-down the album, Bug Cloth, which contained a song, Big Sur Country, which has haunted me ever since.

I wanted to include this song, somehow, in this post, and I figured I would just include a link to a Youtube video.  However, it would seem that this must be one of the few songs ever written that nobody has uploaded, so I had to figure out how to include my own digital copy.  Very little information about Rabbit MacKay, or his backup group – the Somis Rhythm Band (Rabbit came from Somis, CA) – exists on the web, but, sadly, I learned the he passed away on August 10 this year, according to http://cagoldcoastdreamin.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-passing-of-rabbit-mackay.html   .

The lyrics are as follows:-