Bay Area Wildlife – An Irreverent Guide
Book Review by Norman Pillsbury and Steve Tillmann
When Bay Area native Jeff Miller moved to Los Osos he joined the SLO Birding community with a jolt and upended ideas for just how much fun birding can be. Before long, Jeff was integral to birding expeditions to remote county haunts and leading trips for the Morro Bay Bird Festival. Jeff’s desire to explore, sometimes at breakneck speed but always with a smile, labeled him “The Carrizo Kid.” Always ready for adventure with an unwavering desire to help, especially new birders, Jeff became a fun-filled asset to SLO County Birding. Quoted as saying his favorite bird list would be “the birds that saw me,” wherever Jeff went, fun wasn’t far behind. Jeff now lives in Oregon….and we’re pretty sure birding there will never be the same, too!
Since moving from Los Osos, Jeff has written a delightfully quirky and informative guide to the fauna of the greater San Francisco Bay Area titled Bay Area Wildlife. The MCAS’s newsletter, Pacific Flyway, is reviewing his book because many of the bird species featured in this watchable wildlife guide also occur in SLO County, such as roadrunners, yellow-billed magpies, Vaux’s swifts, albatrosses, black-crowned night-herons, rails, bald eagles, burrowing owls, peregrine falcons, woodpeckers, loggerhead shrikes, and rare wood-warblers.
The guide also covers Central Coast wildlife meccas such as Carrizo Plain, Pinnacles National Park, and Monterey Bay. Plus, there is overlap with iconic Central Coast animals such as long-tailed weasels, river otters, badgers, elephant seals, sea otters, steelhead trout, great white sharks, rattlesnakes, monarch butterflies, nudibranchs, mountain lions, pronghorn, condors, and black bears.
Bay Area Wildlife turns out to be so much more than a practical guidebook. The book’s 55 chapters cover more than 100 native wild- life species, from furry mammals to blubbery marine creatures and critters that are feathery, scaly, and slithery. For example, you can stalk the chocolate tarantula, greet the grunion, or conduct a stakeout for elusive marsh chickens. Then enjoy a pint-sized predator safari, raise a shot glass in a toast to the tequila bats, hoot with the owls at night, and soar with the eagles at dawn. Don’t try to run naked with the tule elk or play Twister with the rattlesnakes, though.
His humorous and salacious introductions to these charismatic animal ambassadors will inspire many to get outside to explore and experience nature and to spark interest in conservation.
The book is intended as an antidote to standard nature guides and scholarly ecology papers: informative but also interesting, amusing, and engaging. Meet the “screaming death parrots” (aka peregrine falcons). Or go tide-pooling to commune with “disco slugs dressed for a P-Funk concert” (nudibranchs). Find out where to encounter “rototillers with fur” (badgers).
Jeff’s colorful descriptions offer a compilation of each species’ natural history and fun facts—did you know beavers have vanilla-scented butts, elephant seals have the loudest recorded burps (at 130 decibels), only Usain Bolt can run faster than a roadrunner, or that pooping whales might save the world? Each section also includes tips on when, where, and how to best find and observe each animal.
The book came out November 12, coinciding with one of the best seasons for watching wildlife.
During autumn, the Central Coast and Bay Area regions host amazing animal congregations and mass migrations. Chase the raptor migration or stake out the locales where male tarantulas wander looking for autumnal love, with the females sometimes enjoying a post-coital snack.
Among the charismatic megafauna described in the book is the tule elk, a signature species endemic to California. During fall, you can observe elk rutting, with dramatic jousts of 700-pound bull elk punctuated by a resounding clash of antlers.
The book is also a poignant warning about the loss of biological diversity, with human development during the Anthropocene rapidly eliminating and fragmenting our remaining wildlands and habitat for imperiled species.
The guide connects you to Bay Area and California conservation groups and campaigns, such as seeking state protections for bur- rowing owls and white sturgeon, efforts to protect tule elk at Point Reyes National Seashore, and banning lead ammo that kills condors and eliminating rat poisons that kill raptors, kit foxes, owls, and other predators.
Most inspiring are the stories of ecological restoration, such as removing dams and building fish ladders to bring salmon and steelhead trout back to waterways, building wildlife freeway crossings to create migration corridors for animals from newts to mountain lions, and repairing watersheds with magical restoration gnomes, also known as beavers.
The wildlife species are beautifully illustrated in watercolor along with photographs (including many from Central Coast wildlife photographers). You can order or purchase Bay Area Wildlife now through Heyday books (heydaybooks.com) or The Irreverent Naturalist website (irreverentnaturalist.com).