Island Foxes
Whenever the subject of bucket lists comes up, I always mention my dream to visit every National Park in the US. The Channel Islands were obviously part of that goal, and being part of my home state, they were high on the list yet just out of reach. When Allison and I spent a few days in San Luis Obispo recently, I knew I had an excellent opportunity to make the trip.
Channel Islands National Park comprises five islands off the coast of Southern California (an additional three islands lie outside the park’s jurisdiction). I knew we could realistically only reach one island on this occasion, so Santa Cruz was the natural choice as the largest and easily accessible by ferry. Visiting a National Park is reason enough for me to make a trip, but there was a bonus waiting on the other side of the crossing: an animal found nowhere else on the planet—the island fox (Urocyon littoralis).
Each island with foxes is home to a unique sub-species, and the island fox itself is a distant relative of the mainland gray fox. They’re incredible little creatures, and I do mean little. Evolving in isolation, they’re around the size of a domestic cat and one of the smallest canid species in the world. Equally, their populations have never been huge, but golden eagles reduced their numbers to endangered before a recovery program was introduced.
When we arrived on the island and found a park bench to get our bearings, I wondered how difficult the foxes would be to find. Gray foxes on the mainland are not easy to come by in daylight, and island foxes are one of the rarest mammals in North America. While I pondered this question, one popped out of the long grass beside me, passed under the table, and across the trail.
Over the next hour, I wandered around the harbor area and through the campsite in pursuit of these little foxes. They showed absolutely zero fear of humans, but equally, no interest in us either. Curious animals that lacked interest in me was the best-case scenario because it showed they weren’t dependent on humans for food. Still, it gave me plenty of opportunities to photograph them.
Eventually, it was time to go for a hike. We didn’t go far, but looking at the trail on a map, I realized how big Santa Cruz Island was. You could spend a lot of time there. On our short walk, we climbed above the sea cliffs where a peregrine (Falco peregrinus) patrolled. We found some stunningly beautiful side-blotched lizards (Uta stansburiana elegans) on the rocks and even encountered the island scrub-jay (Aphelocoma insularis), another species unique to the islands.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the foxes explore, sleep, hunt, and scratch. The icing on the cake was a few bottlenose dolphins (Delphinus truncatus) swimming alongside the ferry.
