Where the Wild Things Are

A trail camera in a Malibu garden captures an image of a night visitor. Coyotes are just one of many wild animal species that make their homes among us. All photos © 2014 Suzanne Guldimann

Let the wild rumpus begin!

—Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

In Malibu you don't have to go far to find where the wild things are. They are right here, living parallel lives that rarely intersect with their humans neighbors, despite the fact that we all occupy the same neighborhoods.

At the Malibu Post we've been monitoring some of our local wildlife for the past four months with the help of a trail camera. It's an illuminating experience. 

I was anticipating catching the local coyotes at work when I set the camera up. We see constant evidence of their presence: footprints, scat, and holes dug in pursuit of gophers, although this wily wild canine is rarely seen in person. But the very first photo we captured wasn't a coyote, it was this shy beauty:

Madam Bobcat is a silent secret presence in the night garden, where she hunts for rabbits, and rodents. Unlike the coyotes, she leaves no trace of her presence.

I was astonished. I had no idea there was a bobcat in the area, but I learned that a friend who lives nearby has seen her so often that she refers to her as "my bobcat."

The bobcat is shy and secretive. We rarely get a photo of all of her, but we know now that she is a presence in the garden. Bobcats are generally solitary and require a large territory—at least a square mile for females and nearly twice that for males, according to the Urban Carnivore website. 

Bobcats are bigger than a house cat and look impressively wild, with spots and stripes and enormous paws, but they are not a threat to humans and prefer to avoid confrontations. they are also much smaller than most people realize, usually weighing no more than 15-18 pounds. Urban legend provides many colorful tall tales of wildcats attacking people and pets, but National Park Service biologists who have been studying the local bobcat population for over a decade, maintain that there is absolutely no credible evidence of a bobcat ever attacking a human or eating domestic cats or dogs. Bobcats are obligate carnivores, but they primarily hunt rabbits and rodents like ground squirrels, gophers and wood rats. Unfortunately, this puts them at high risk for secondary poisoning from anticoagulant rodenticides. Research indicates that the impact of poison on the bobcat's immune system can lead to death from manage and from a condition called chronic wasting disease.

Madam Bobcat performs a disappearing act, slipping through a gap in the fence in broad daylight. You can just see her nose and her ears, illuminated by the sun. A blueline stream nearby and a buffer zone of riparian habitat, including deep thickets—and plenty of poison oak that keeps human interlopers out—provides shelter and a wildlife corridor for animals like bobcats, who may include gardens in their nightly rounds but require secure places to den and to raise their young.

This is the wild thing I expected to photograph—Malibu's resident trickster spirit, the coyote. I haven't been disappointed. The remote camera, with its motion detector and infrared flash, has recorded the previously unseen adventures of a pair of coyotes.

After carefully checking to make sure the coast is clear, the coyote squeezes through the same small gap in the fence that the bobcat uses. This is a tiny space, barely nine inches high and less than two feet across. This coyote arrived at 3:02 a.m., and left, for a reason she didn't bother to share, two minutes later. 

Mischief managed, I guess. Or perhaps she received word from her mate informing her that the gophers were better on the other side of the fence. Coyotes sing to communicate with the other members of their family, not while hunting, which would defeat the point of being sneaky and stealthy. The local coyotes appear to live in a small family group consisting of a mated pair and their young. They sometimes hunt cooperatively, especially while the youngsters are learning to fend for themselves, but they absolutely do not hunt in giant packs, no matter what local urban legend claims. Coyotes are also smaller than most people realize, rarely weighing more than 35 pounds.

There are always coyotes and many other species of wildlife living among us, whether we are aware of them or not, but the drought has greatly increased contact with humans, sometimes with tragic results for households pets. Pet owners are strongly encouraged to keep cats indoors and make sure small dogs have a safely fenced enclosure and are always walked on a leash.

This coyote is not sure what to think of the infrared flash on the remote camera. Coyotes are intelligent and curious, qualities that help them to adapt and survive in urban environments. 

Coyotes look big, but a lot of their bulk is fur. They can fit through remarkably small gaps and are capable of jumping a six foot fence. Anyone who wants to keep coyotes out of their space should make sure that there aren't any gaps in their fences or gates. Coyote rollers—rotating pipes that prevent coyotes from climbing over fences are easy to install. There are DIY and manufactured options on the Internet. 

There are a lot of urban legends about coyotes and bobcats. The truth is, they are fragile, intelligent, flesh-and-blood animals not that different in behavior from the dogs and cats that share our lives as companion animals.

Unlike the bobcat, coyotes are omnivores. They dig for gophers and ground squirrels and are expert mousers, and yes, they will catch and eat cats and small dogs if they get the chance, but they also eat fruit and insects and anything remotely edible that humans leave outside, including bird seed and BBQ drippings. Coyotes leave scat in the open as a sort of canine calling card, so it's relatively easy to determine what they've been eating at a glance. Lately, ours have been feasting on pomegranates—they wait until the fruit splits open, then pull them off the lower branches, eat the good parts and leave the empty rind behind. They've also been eating large quantities of palm tree fruit, potato bugs and snails. The snails surprised me, but they are abundant, easy to catch and probably provide plenty of protein and moisture—necessities in short supply during drought conditions.

The coyotes and Madam Bobcat aren't the only animals to use the gap in the fence. Rabbits also travel this way. These fierce and intrepid lagomorphs are busy in the garden day and night, and not only thrive but appear to enjoy every minute of their lives despite being at the bottom of the food chain and in constant danger.

There are other garden visitors that have so far eluded the camera: the raccoons that fish for tadpoles in the creek and for koi in a neighbor's pond; the ferocious, secretive long-tailed weasel, glimpsed only twice in all the years we've lived here; and the gray foxes we sometimes hear yipping at the moon on winter nights but rarely ever see.

The sight of a gray fox is so rare that I felt inspired to write a poem commemorating my first encounter with this elusive species in 2008. 

The Fox

I walked on the beach on a winter’s day,

In a moment snatched between rain showers,

When the sea and the sky were pewter gray,

Empty and lonely as the dawn hours.

I heard a curlew’s sweet sorrowing cry,

As bright and clear as the evening star.

I watched a little gray shadow slip by,

Secret as a ghost, across the sand bar,

Between the sea and the storm-swollen creek.

Along the shore I watched him lightly flit

Chasing the silly plover, not to seek

To catch one, but just for the joy of it.

He left his footprints for the tide to fill—

As proof for me that what I’d seen was true:

That foxes live here also, even still.

I’ve lived here all my life and never knew.

After encountering the fox, the bobcat shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was. And it makes me wonder what other unseen creatures may be quietly living among us. 

Henry David Thoreau famously wrote "in wildness is the preservation of the world." One doesn't need to travel to remote corners of the world to find that wildness, it's often just outside the door.  And while no one is thrilled when the skunks take up residence under the deck or the coyotes hold a wild rumpus under the bedroom window at 3 a.m., most Malibu residents appreciate what a gift it is to live in a place that still has room for wild things.

Suzanne Guldimann
16 November 2014

We rarely see coyotes by daylight, but this one appeared right in time for the birthday of the Malibu Surfside New's founder and former editor and publisher Anne Soble. Anne was (and is) an advocate for all wildlife but especially for coyotes. She often devoted her editorials to the issue of conservation and peaceful coexistence with this remarkable wild canine. So it seems entirely appropriate that a coyote should stop by to pay his respects on that particular day. He is one of the celestial beings in Chumash cosmology, after all. One of the Sky People, a creator, shapeshifter, hero, trickster and messenger. 

Trickster Spirit

A pair of coyotes pause to stare as they make their way up a hillside in the Santa Monica Mountains just before sunset on a spring afternoon. I was several hundred feet away, and I thought I was being wonderfully quiet and stealthy, but they knew I was there. As often as I've seen coyotes I always feel a thrill at the sight of this intelligent, mischievous, adaptable and often misunderstood wild dog. All Photos © 2014 S. Guldimann

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. 

—Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1928


The Chumash, Malibu's original human residents, revered Sky Coyote as a sacred trickster and associated him with the north star. He plays a game of chance with the sun each year on the Winter Solstice, legend says. If he wins there is rain, but when the sun wins, the land is stricken with drought. The current drought is exacting a price on every living thing in the West, and Coyote's terrestrial kin—despite their intelligence, adaptability and cunning—are no exception.

I have great respect for Malibu’s indigenous wild dog, who survives and thrives despite habitat loss and urbanization. That respect includes that knowledge that coyotes will catch and eat our much loved cats if we let them out, and the neighbors' chickens, too. 

Many people never see their wild canine neighbors, but everyone has heard them: their eerie and oddly musical pack song is part of the nighttime soundtrack of Malibu. This year, however, the prolonged drought is driving coyotes into residential neighborhoods in search of food and water and causing conflict with humans. 

Anyone who has lived here for long learns quickly never to let cats and small dogs out of sight outdoors and to secure chickens, goats and other livestock, but it is vanishingly rare for a coyote to attack large animals or humans. It's helpful to remember that coyotes aren't actually very large. Even the biggest, healthiest coyote rarely weighs more than 30-35 pounds. That thick, fluffy fur coat and the big ears help them to look larger than they are and the deep-seated human fear of wolves and their kin that has for generations generated stories of monsters like werewolves and skinwalkers invests coyotes with a fierceness that they rarely possess in reality. I’ve covered coyote-related issues for the Malibu Surfside News for a number of years and have never encountered a credible local incident involving an attack on a human.

Humans, on the other hand, take a massive toll on coyotes. According to a recent Washington Post article, the federal Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services reported killing 75,326 coyotes in 2013. Wildlife killing contests take place in California, despite being technically illegal under state Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations. A "Coyote Drive" in Modoc County is currently drawing fierce opposition. But coyotes are also increasingly the inadvertent victims of secondary rodenticide poisoning. That's because, while they will eat any small animal that they can catch, their main source of protein comes from rodents, including pocket gophers, mice and rats—the primary targets for rat poison.

This Serra Canyon coyote still haunts me. It was threadbare and covered with sores, a victim of secondary rodenticide poisoning that attacks the animal's immune system and makes it susceptible to a potentially fatal mange.

The National Park Service has been studying the coyote population of the Santa Monica Mountains for almost two decades. According to NPS research, the coyotes' diet—in order of frequency—consists of fruit, rabbits, woodrats, pocket gophers, voles, squirrels, other small mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, deer, and trash. Domestic animals make up less than one percent of the local coyote diet.

“Cats are one percent, trash is 10 percent—not a major part of what they are eating,” NPS biologist and lead urban predator researcher Seth Riley told me during a 2012 interview.  “Domestic animals are not a major source of food in urban areas.” 

Coyotes aren't sweethearts—they are efficient hunters and scavengers who will eat pretty much anything they can find, including pets, but they aren't monsters. They kill from need not with malice. Hunts are conducted in silence. Coyotes sing to communicate with each other, not to announce that they are hunting.

Coyotes are thought to mate for life, and males help females feed, protect and educate their offspring. Older siblings and other non-breeding members of the coyote's extended family have been observed helping to take care of pups. Because of the coyote's social structure coyote/dog crosses are uncommon in the wild. According to Humane Society reports, genetic testing reveals that there are actually few genuine  "coy-dogs." The evidence indicates that most of these are bred by humans, and then dumped in the wild when their human creators find they are too wild to train or subdue. 

According to Riley, coyotes are more likely to be nocturnal in urban areas, but it's not unusual for them to be active during the day. Pet owners need to be aware that, just because you don't see a coyote, doesn't mean the coyote isn't nearby. They aren't called trickster spirits for nothing. 

 “We believe coyotes are a vital component of rural and urban communities, deserving of respect for their adaptability, resilience, and intelligence,” Camila Fox, founder of the Coyote Project, states on the Project Coyote website. “We aim to create a shift in attitudes toward coyotes and other native carnivores by replacing ignorance and fear with understanding and appreciation.”

The experts are unanimous that coexistence is the key to coping with coyotes. Removing attractions like dense brush, unsecured garbage cans and fallen fruit in backyard orchards can help prevent coyote-human interactions. Filling gaps in fences can also help reduce backyard incursions. 

A coyote carefully scopes out the area.

Coyotes are often attracted to patio BBQs or outdoor kitchens, where meat drippings and scraps, or just the smell of food, lingers. They are also attracted to pet dishes and bird feeders. Making sure that there are no scraps of food and sweeping up scattered birdseed can help discourage unwelcome visitors.

 “A fed coyote is a dead coyote,” is one of Fox’s axioms. Malibu coyotes will eat palm tree fruits and ornamental berries. They will also raid all types of fruit trees and seem to have a passion for figs. 

Domestic animals should be fed indoors and kept in at night. Cats, small dogs and young children should never be left unattended. Livestock, including chickens and rabbits, should be secured in pens and hutches. Coyotes can easily jump a six-foot fence, and they aren’t the only predators out looking for an easy meal—they share the night hunt with owls, foxes, bob cats, and raccoons. 

A pair of coyotes cross Mulholland Highway and vanish into the storm drain on the other side. Road crossing is a major danger for all local wildlife, even in remote areas with low population density, and one of the leading causes of mortality.

For human-coyote encounters, Project Coyote recommends making noise to scare the coyote away. “The first thing is to be big, bad and loud,” Fox said at a 2012 coyote awareness community meeting in Calabasas. “Make eye contact.  Don’t run and don’t stop until the coyote retreats.”

This male coyote paused to leave a calling card before vanishing. "I see you watching me and this is what I think of you," he seems to say. He is a trickster, after all. 

 

Fox recommends using a rattle made out of an empty can containing a handful of pennies, whistles, air horns, or a pop-up umbrella. She stresses that the goal is to frighten the coyote, not harm it or harass it. Fox says that coyote behavior is similar to that of domestic dogs, and that observers can learn from coyote body language.

 ProjectCoyote.org has a wide range of resources on peaceful coexistence. The City of Calabasas has an excellent coyote policy that Malibu could easily adopt. The Calabasas website also offers practical and humane coyote advice, starting with: 

Recognize that the coyote is indigenous to Calabasas. We built our city in the coyote's backyard and the coyote has adapted to this environment. We should adapt to the presence of the coyote. 

I hope that's a goal we can all attain.

Suzanne Guldimann

1 July 2014

Strong Poison

Please don't poison us! These great horned owl chicks were rescued by the California Wildlife Center and had a second chance at life, but all kinds of wildlife in the Santa Monica Mountains—including owls like these, are increasingly the victims of secondary poisoning from the use of anti-coagulent rodenticides—rat poison. © 2014 S. Guldimann

O, I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son!

I fear your are poisoned, my handsome young man.

O, yes, I am poisoned, mother, make my bed soon,

For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain would lie down.

—Lord Randall, English traditional ballad

If the wild animals of Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains could sing ballads, "Lord Randall," a classic tale of death by poison, might be their rallying anthem, but since they can't human activists are rallying to be their voice and work for change.

Anticoagulant rat poison kills more than rodents in the Santa Monica Mountains. Among the documented victims of inadvertent poisoning are mountain lions, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, owls, weasels, opossums, hawks, snakes, as well as native non-pest rodent species and domestic cats and dogs, but there’s a growing move to stop the carnage and replace unsustainable poison use with wildlife friendly alternatives.

Many species impacted by rodenticide die as a result of direct poisoning, but according to National Park Service research, rat poison is a slow and painful death sentence for some species, including bob cats and coyotes.

"I can't say it strongly enough, never, ever use poison to control wildlife. Secondary rodenticide toxicity, and sarcoptic mange [caused by poisoning] is a huge problem right now,” California Wildlife Center Executive Director Cindy Reyes said, at 2010 presentation that I reported on for the Malibu Surfside News. “We are seeing huge levels of toxins in the system. Owls, hawks, bobcats, all come in with poison symptoms. Rat poison is not a good option." 

Here's a Malibu coyote infected with mange. I photographed her on Cross Creek Road in the Serra Retreat last week. She was still on her feet, but seemed weak and dazed. The California Wildlife Center said they can't help in a case like this unless the animal is brought to them. They recommended that I call animal control. However, animal control will only respond to a downed coyote, and their response is usually euthanasia, although in some cases they will work with animal rescue organizations.  © 2014 S. Guldimann

Here's a healthy male coyote with a beautiful bushy tail for comparison. We're lucky that the poison and mange epidemic doesn't seem to have spread to the west end of Malibu, not yet. © 2014 S. Guldimann

Since then, the tide has begun to change. In Malibu, a campaign started by members of the Agricultural Society called Poison-Free Malibu/Santa Monica Mountains, with support from across the community, led to the city passing an anti-pesticide resolution (only the State of California can pass a ban). Predictably, the only ones protesting were the pest control industry. 

A local organization called the Earth Friendly Management Team has added its voice to the fight and is working with neighboring communities to raise rodenticide awareness and change rodenticide and herbicide use policies.

There are still hold-outs in Malibu. Residential pest control companies are doing a brisk business in residential areas. Most of Malibu’s commercial shopping centers continue to use rodenticide bait. One of the worst offenders is Malibu High School, which has repeatedly carpeted the upper playing fields with rodenticides to kill the local ground squirrel and gopher population. But thanks to the Poison Free volunteers, the most dangerous rodenticides are off the shelves in all Malibu shops.

In rural Malibu, the most often encountered rat is our old friend the dusky footed wood rat that I wrote about in November here on the Malibu Post. Wood rats are native wildlife, they are not remotely frightening, and unlikely to carry any kind of disease that is dangerous to humans, although they are vectors for fleas.  Rattus rattus, the common wild black rat, also shows up in some Malibu neighborhoods. It's not a native and is one of the most successful and common animals on earth. I once watched one leisurely waddle across a rafter at Alice's Restaurant on the pier—it certainly added a nautical feel to the place but wasn't exactly the kind of dinner guest one usually prefers. Excluding rodents like these by closing off openings into attics, crawl spaces and outbuildings can keep human-rat confrontations to a minimum. © 2014 S. Guldimann

This, bright-eyed, sleek and shiny pocket gopher is probably rodent public enemy number one in Malibu. It has a genius for transforming gardens overnight into miniature scenes of WW I trench warfare and has a passion for everything humans like to grow. Raised beds lined with heavy-duty mesh are the best way to keep gophers out of vegetable gardens and flower beds. Encouraging owls and hawks to frequent the garden can also help. Traps are the only safe option when all other remedies fail. Coyotes and bob cats also hunt gophers, so do domestic dogs and cats. Gopher poison is probably one of the most common ways rodenticides end up poisoning other species in the Santa Monica Mountains. Its use on the burgeoning vineyards has spread rodenticide into vast swaths of the mountains that used to be pesticide free. © 2014 S. Guldimann

The recently finalized Land Use Plan for the part of Malibu that is in unincorporated Los Angeles County also takes a stand on rodenticides and herbicides.

“The use of insecticides, herbicides, anti-coagulant rodenticides or any toxic chemical substance which has the potential to significantly degrade biological resources in the Santa Monica Mountains, shall be prohibited, except where necessary to protect or enhance the habitat itself, such as for eradication of invasive plant species or habitat restoration, and where there are no feasible alternatives that would result in fewer adverse effects to the habitat value of the site," the final draft of the document states.

“Work toward a poison free Santa Monica Mountains by exploring the feasibility of eliminating the use of all rodenticides at the soonest practicable date, and identify and promote rodent control methods that do not involve the use of poisons.”

An astonishing range of wildlife is being impacted by rodenticide. Owls and hawks are the most frequent bird victims but turkey vultures—part of the local garbage crew—depend on carrion and can easily ingest rodenticide. © 2014 S. Guldimann

On September 11, 2013, the Calabasas City Council also adopted a  resolution urging businesses in Calabasas to no longer use or sell anticoagulant rodenticides, and urging all property owners to cease purchasing or using anticoagulant rodenticides on their properties in Calabasas.

Malibu pesticide and water quality activist and Earth Friendly Management Team member Wendi Werner brought this event to my attention. I'm planning to be there and hope to see some of you there, too.

Calabasas is sponsoring a pet safe, wildlife safe, rodenticide awareness community meeting on On September 11, 2013, 6-8 p.m., at the Calabasas Public Library Founders Hall located at 200 Civic Center Way, Calabasas, CA 91302. It’s free and open to the public. 

NPS biologist Seth Riley will be there to talk about the impact of rodenticides on urban carnivores. He’ll be joined my members of Poison-Free Malibu/Santa Monica Mountains and Julie Elginer, Adjunct Professor at the UCLA School of Public Health.

This is one of the white-tailed kites that winter at Malibu Bluffs Park and are regularly seen perched at the top of the dead eucalyptus trees by the side of PCH. This raptor, which came close to extinction in the 20th century, has extensive federal protections but is reportedly a frequent victim of rodenticide poisoning because, like the barn owl, it depends primarily on mice, and frequently hunts near human activity, where rodenticide use is elevated. © 2014 S. Guldimann

Malibuites who are seeking safe options to rodenticide might consider building or buying an owl box and installing raptor poles in their gardens. Owl nest boxes can help provide incentive for owls to take up residence—this is owl nesting season, so it’s a perfect time to install a box. Just be aware that owls won’t hunt too close to their home base. Prefabricated nest boxes and directions for homemade versions are available from a variety of sources online.

Raptor poles—a simple t-shaped perch on a sturdy pole are good choice for open fields and hills where there aren’t trees or vantage points for hawks to perch. 

Mechanical snap traps are the most humane choice for eliminating rodents when all other options fail. 

Malibu's increasing rare native badger preys primarily on rodents and is another potential accidental victim of rat poison. The intrusion of vineyards into the Santa Monica Mountains backcountry is put badgers at risk of secondary rodenticide poisoning. © 2014 S. Guldimann

Rodentide was an issue that concerned Anne Soble, the former owner and publisher of the Malibu Surfside News, greatly. She devoted numerous "Publisher's Notebook" entries to the subject and we covered the issue extensively. Here's a 2010 article that I wrote about secondary poisoning in bob cats,  a 2011 article on the use of rodenticides at Malibu High School, and a 2012 article on the campaign to eliminate anticoagulant rodenticide from Malibu. I hope the new Surfside News will continue to highlight this issue. It's one that is important to many in the community.

One thing I learned while covering the issue is that change has to take place throughout the community.  Animals don't recognize human boundaries. Animals in our "poison free" backyards can easily be poisoned by neighbors who are not aware of the risk. We need to all work together on this campaign and get the word out to every one.

Suzanne Guldimann

The Malibu Post

This is Pippin, the Malibu Post's official LOL Cat. He's here to remind everyone that domestic cats and dogs and human children are also the victims of rodenticide poisoning. It's a slow painful death for rats, mice,  gophers, squirrels, coyotes, bob cats, owls, hawks, snakes, badgers, raccoons, opossums, cats and dogs. The list goes on and on, but it doesn't have to. It's something we can stop, if we all work together. © 2014 S. Guldimann

Endless Summer

Smokey Bear says it all. 

The title of the 1966 surfing film is intended to generate visions of eternal surf and sun—a surfer’s Shangra La, but the Endless Summer we’re experiencing during what is suppose to be winter this year is more like hell than heaven, and there hasn't been any surf in weeks, either.

It was 82 degrees in the parking lot of Malibu City Hall at 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 15, and 84 at Pepperdine University at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday. After what feels like an eternity of gale-force winds, the Santa Anas have diminished today, but the red flag warning is still in place. 

After weeks of wind and fire danger, everyone in wildfire danger zones—and that’s most of Southern California these days—are feeling not so much nervous as exhausted. Smoke from the Colby Fire and news footage of burning homes is a reminder that the danger is real and constant. That fire, like the catastrophic Corral Fire in Malibu in 2007, was started by an illegal camp fire. 

Smoke from the Colby Fire, more than 50 miles away, drifts past Point Dume. We've only had a quarter inch of rain so far, not enough to wake the giant coreopsis flowers from dormancy or even generate the growth of winter grass. I am reminded of Fredrick Hastings Rindge's description of the great drought of 1863: "In November, 1863 there was a regular downpour, and it did not rain again until November, 1864."

Smoke from the Colby Fire turns sunset sullen and ominous on the evening of January 16. The wind was so powerful at Corral Beach that I couldn't hold the camera steady, even with the monopod. I had to lean on the car to get this shot.

Humans aren’t the only ones feeling the stress, the drought and heat are impacting local wildlife, too. 

Snakes that normally hibernate are active. I spoke to a woman on Wednesday who found four rattlesnakes on her porch last week. Gophers, desperate for green food, are eating things they normally leave alone, including inedible bulbs, like narcissus, and even bitter and tough pomegranate, citrus and oak roots.

There have reportedly been nine incidents of pet animals attacked or taken by coyotes in the Point Dume area in the past two weeks. Coyotes, desperate for water and food, are taking chances that they would never take during a normal winter. The consequences are tragic for pet owners and ultimately for the coyotes.

Coyotes are increasingly coming into conflict with humans, as the drought forces them to seek food and water in residential areas. Residents can help prevent conflict by making sure small animals are not left alone outside, small dogs are walked on short leashes, instead of retractable leases, gaps in fencing are closed, and potential attractants like trash cans, BBQ grease, fallen fruit and birdseed are removed. 

I wrote this piece for the Malibu Surfside News on coyotes a couple of weeks ago. I talked to Camilla Fox, executive director of the Coyote Project, for the article. Her organization has excellent tip on how to safely and humanely keep coyotes away, available here.

Like the coyotes, deer are also moving into developed areas in search of green food and fresh water. This is the Pepperdine herd. These animals are usually sleek and appear healthy but looked a bit seedy this week. The one major thing residents can do to help the local deer population is to stay alert when driving and especially to slow down at dusk, when deer—and other animal jaywalkers, including skunks, are most active.

While no one wants to encourage coyotes, a safe, clean, consistent water source that is far enough off the ground to discourage coyotes and other interlopers, can be a tremendous help for wild birds. Even this rufus hummingbird has been showing up at the backyard birdbath this week. The dew that hummingbirds usually depend on for hydration is in short supply.

Honey bees and other beneficial insects also benefit from a safe water source.

NOAA is forecasting at least 10 more days of high pressure and a possible return of the Santa Anas next weekend. We can only hope February and March will bring much needed rain, and that endless summer will give way to winter at last, and the hope of spring.

This is the last leaf of autumn in our garden, clinging stubbornly to the otherwise bare liquidambar tree through all the gale force Santa Ana winds of this crazy un-wintery winter.