San Benito’s wealth is in its wildlife
It’s an extraordinary privilege to live in San Benito
County.
Late Sunday afternoon, we entered the county by ducking off Hwy.
101 at King City. We were returning from San Luis Obispo, and as is
our family’s habit, we opted to get off the freeway for some
backroads exploration.
San Benito’s wealth is in its wildlife
It’s an extraordinary privilege to live in San Benito County.
Late Sunday afternoon, we entered the county by ducking off Hwy. 101 at King City. We were returning from San Luis Obispo, and as is our family’s habit, we opted to get off the freeway for some backroads exploration.
It was unseasonably warm – as it’s been all week. Leaves were turning color, announcing fall’s arrival. As we descended to Hwy. 25 at the intersection near Bitterwater School, we stopped to gape at a herd of seven deer, picking through a just-plowed field. Only minutes later we passed a pronghorn antelope across the road from the deer.
Pronghorn are said to be North America’s fastest land animals, but this one, sleek and well fed, was not interested in going anywhere quickly.
Since I was a passenger on this leg of our trip, I engaged in a quiet recreation that I’m fond of. I began counting bird species that I could identify from a moving car. The list was not impressive in its numbers – lots of small brown birds defy identification at 55 mph. But it was impressive for its quality.
Phainopepla, North America’s only representative of the silky flycatcher group, flew by. The slender, glossy black birds sport a cockatoo-like crest. San Benito County is at the northern extreme of their range. Paicines Reservoir, an otherwise unremarkable shallow puddle just off Hwy. 25, revealed American white pelicans, one of the continent’s largest birds with wings that stretch to more than nine feet.
Even as we entered town, a bright red-tailed hawk circled overhead to become the last bird on my day’s list. Typical of San Benito County, we spotted more yellow-billed magpies than we could count. Loggerhead shrike, a harlequin-colored songbird that preys on insects and small animals, made an appearance. Elsewhere, both species are dwindling. But in San Benito County, they are to be expected on almost every outing.
Arriving home after a weekend away, I was struck again at the richness of this place.
It’s the water
We recently purchased a new washing machine, one that promised a $100 rebate thanks to it’s miserly consumption of water. The rebate came with a catch: we needed to open our home to an audit.
A call to the San Benito County Water District resulted in an appointment. At 4 p.m. on the appointed day, an auditor – Leo – showed up and took a quick lap around the house. In the space of a few minutes, he showed us how to repair some balky faucets, supplied a low-flow shower head and dropped off some hose nozzles.
The verdict was that we were doing OK, and with our ongoing project of eliminating our lawn, we were bound to do even better.
John Gregg, who recently retired from his longtime post as executive director of the county water district, describes San Benito County as a “temperate desert.”
He’s right. We receive an average of 13 inches of rain annually, almost all of it between October and April. What flows from our taps is lifted from wells or imported over hundreds of miles.
It only makes sense to recognize the preciousness of the water that sustains us all.
