Dry mountains border the plain
I’m naming our days after the best new mammal we saw that day (unless we didn’t). So we’ll see how we go.
Today we were visiting the Carrizo Plain, an essentially wild area of dry grassland and scrub in between two of California’s gigantic agricultural valleys. Bone dry mountains separate the Carrizo Plain from these valleys with their serried ranks of olive trees, cherry trees, grape vines, etc. There were a lot of signs up suggesting the drought and water shortages are a hot political issue right now. Given the vast scale of agriculture we drove past in the San Joaquin valley I’m not surprised – the thought of all these millions of acres of growing fruit trees turning into leafless skeletons must be horrifying to those who live and work here.
The Carrizo Plain is quite different, an apparently forgotten corner of California, it used to be ranch country but was perhaps not flat enough to be worth turning into mega-agriculture, so it remains a wild grassland scattered with the occasional ramshackle ranch buildings. Kinda ironic; the “plain” is really a valley only a couple of miles wide, and the “valleys” either side are seemingly endless dead-flat plains.
Carrizo Plain
Later we went out night-spotlighting on the Carrizo Plain. Alas, the moon was shining so bright that I could have driven all the way without my headlights on. Why is this a problem? Well, a full moon is to mammal-watching what “leaves on the tracks” are to train-spotting. Predators and prey alike just don’t want to emerge from hiding when the light is so bright. We did see a few kangaroo rats and a black-tailed jack-rabbit, but nuffin’ much else.
Funnily enough, right outside the little (closed) visitor centre we saw our coolest mammal – the tiny-but-fierce San Joaquin Antelope Squirrel, which jumped on a grasshopper right beside our parked car and then devoured it.
Antelope squirrel hunter!
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