Planning Outdoor Calendar for 2017


ERNIE COWAN Outdoors

BEST TIMES OF YEAR TO EXPLORE COUNTY’S OFFERINGS 

Some people are just drawn to the outdoors.
I’m one of them.
Being outdoors— hunting, fishing, bird-watching, hiking or enjoying nature and wildlife photography— is when I am the happiest.
Some people have social calendars, or work schedules they compile at the start of each year. For me, that exercise involves creating my outdoor calendar.
Here is a list of a few of the things I try to schedule each year in the outdoors.
January is peak migration season for birds at Salton Sea. Less than 100 miles to the east is a vast inland sea that provides winter hospitality for huge flocks of visiting birds, including several varieties of ducks, geese, swans, sandhill cranes and American whit! e pelicans. How thrilling to be startled by the explosive rising of 10,000 or more geese lifting into the air, creating a sound like a jetliner taking off.
Resident species such as hawks, dove, quail and burrowing owls are also easily found around Salton Sea.
February is desert season. A great time to explore the wilderness trails of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, hike to remote waterfalls and palm groves, or encounter bighorn sheep, a curious roadrunner or study the unique geology of the curdled landscape.
Desert landscape photography is also more dramatic during the winter with crisp, clear air, and lower sun angles that dramatize the terrain shadows.
March this year could be a spectacular wildflower season in San Diego’s deserts. Ample winte! r rains can mean a carpet of color along with hidden gardens f! or hikers exploring the vast desert expanse. A good wildflower season will extend into April and then climb to mountain elevations for May and June with fields of lupines, poppies, goldfields and wild lilac carpeting hillsides and meadows of Laguna, Cuyamaca and Palomar Mountain.
March is also when migrating hooded orioles return to San Diego from their winter home in Mexico, bringing color and comedy to backyard gardens. Dust off those nectar feeders and have them hung by the end of February for the early arrivals. Hummingbirds will use the same feeders. Hunters first head to the field in March with the opening of wild turkey season, and the Eastern Sierra trout season opens in April. I never miss that.
If you are captivated by the night sky, May marks the first appearance of the summer Milky Way. Dark sky week! ends will often find sky gazers, amateur astronomers or photographers in remote places such as Mount Laguna, Palomar or the open spaces of Anza-Borrego to observe or record the celestial beauty.
Don’t forget the meteor showers that will ignite the night sky several times during the year. The bestshowers being the Quadrantids on the night of Jan. 3-4, the Perseids on Aug. 12-13, and the Geminids on Dec. 13-14.
Spring is the start of offshore sportfishing in San Diego, with peak season arriving in July-September when tuna, Dorado, yellowtail and bass are activelybiting. The summer months are vacation time when I generally try to escape for a week or two to the Eastern Sierra. My passion is fly-fishing and hi! king. I can get lost for a day wandering along a small stream, catching! and releasing one or two trout in each hole and moving on to the next spot. I think flyfishing is just a good excuse to hike. The warm days of summer mean night catfishing at several local lakes. There’s a kind of magic to relaxing in a boat or along the shore of a local lake, the soft glow of a lantern your only light, and the warmth of a summer night surrounding you as you wait for that big whiskerfish to bite.
September brings hunters back to the field with opening of dove season, followed by deer season in October and fall turkey season in November. September is also the start of tarantula breeding season when the big, hairy spiders can be found wandering in native grass at places like Daley Ranch Reserve in Escondido. Evenings are prime time to find them, and the cooler temperatures make hiking ideal late in the day. September is often thunderstorm season in San Diego when tropical monsoons boil up from Mexico bringing massive thunderheads and occasional lightning storms and flash floods. Outdoors lovers often follow the storms on weather radar and chase them. I’m guilty.
Fall usually brings another journey north to the Eastern Sierra for hiking, good trout fishing and the spectacular show of fall color as aspen groves ignite in brilliant autumn displays.
December is sunset season, when gentle clouds fill the sky, providing a canvas for the display of spectacular colors.
For the San Diego outdoors lover, there’s an endless list of things to do throughout the year.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Soft whispering of quail a sign property has come a long way A male quail being a lookout. (ERNIE COWAN) ERNIE COWAN  Outdoors I could hear the whispers and it sounded juicy. If only I understood quail. It was an intimate moment with nature like I had never experienced before. Sitting motionless at the edge of the flowerbed I was listening in to the whispered conversations of feeding quail just a few feet away. The murmurings were hushed, almost inaudible. I’ve written before about the “muttering army” of quail that pass my bedroom window at dawn as they emerge from native cover and march to a nearby seed feeder. Their not-so-subtle cooing then is an almost daily alarm clock. This was the same sound, but I could almost not hear it. Had there been a wind or other noise the sounds would have vanished. The feeding quail were obviously close to each other with no need to be speaking loudly. This became an impromptu sit-and-see moment. I was out enjoying the morning sun and had pulled up a
Read more
Image
  Birds will head to Mexico for the winter By  ERNIE COWAN While the civilized world seems to struggle in turmoil right now, the natural clock of ages faithfully ticks on. As another August slips from the calendar, the beat of nature goes on, and the happy visitors to my summer garden are hearing the call to launch them on a journey south. We can’t hear this call, but the hooded orioles do, and they are eagerly preparing to return to some preordained place in Mexico for the winter. These beautiful birds have added color, sound and joy to Mt. Whoville, as they have for thousands of other bird lovers throughout Southern California who provide food, water and nesting sites. A week ago, I began to notice fewer brightly colored males, and this week the males are gone. This is typical, with males leaving first, followed by females and the late-crop juveniles. For the past few weeks the orioles have been feeding aggressively at the nectar feeders, quibbling and cackling as they always do. It
Read more
Image
ERNIE COWAN  Outdoors It was a wildlife encounter I can only describe as profound. I’ve photographed desert bighorn sheep many times over 50-plus years, but this adventure was one I will never forget. The summer heat was withering as I stepped from my vehicle in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Not only were temperatures well into the triple digits, but it was slightly after noon so there was no mercy from the pounding midday sun. I came with high hopes of finding bighorn sheep in one of the desert canyons that has perennial water. These isolated sources of water are a thin lifeline for the animals who live in this arid place. The air temperature alone was bad enough, but I could feel even more heat radiating off the light-colored desert sand as I followed the dusty trail. Movement caught my eye. A jackrabbit? They are not typically active in midday summer heat. I stopped on the trail and suddenly a massive desert bighorn ram pushed through a thicket of ind
Read more