Living at The Crosby means sharing the neighborhood with a lot more than golfers. Our home sits on the edge of San Diego County preserve land that stretches back hundreds of acres toward Lake Hodges — and the wildlife doesn’t pay much attention to property lines. Some of it is spectacular. Some of it requires snake fencing.
The Crosby Wildlife
We occasionally see southern mule deer, usually at dusk. They’ll work the grasses or nibble the bushes along the back fence. Our lot backs up to hundreds of acres of San Diego County preserve land — no neighbors behind us, but plenty of coyotes, deer, and bobcat moving through. Mountain lion have been spotted in the area, though we’ve never seen one ourselves. The same preserve that makes this such good wildlife habitat is also a serious fire risk.
Coyotes are a constant presence. Our dog Jake was a muscular Great Dane/black lab mix at around 100 pounds — double or triple a coyote’s weight — and he had no trouble running them out of the yard. That calculation changes with a smaller dog, and we’ve seen coyotes work in pairs to draw a dog away from its owner. They’re smart, adaptable, and completely at home in a housing community next to open land.
For years we grew zinfandel grapes and made our own wine. When we started traveling full time in our Newmar Dutch Star motorhome we rented the house, and the grapes created complications — coyotes jumping the fence to get at the fruit, and safety concerns with renters’ small children and dogs. We eventually pulled the vines. The hooded orioles may have been drawn here partly by the grapes; they keep coming back regardless.
Bobcat show up occasionally on the hillside, usually during the day. Most of my sightings have come from the trail cam rather than in person. They tend to use the irrigation ditch as a travel corridor — it gives them a clear path with some cover.
We get raccoons and opossums too. Opossums are often misunderstood — they eat dead matter, consume enormous numbers of ticks, and generally clean up after everything else. We leave them alone.
The county preserve has a dense rattlesnake population, which is why we installed snake fencing around the entire property. Sandy is vigilant about keeping any vegetation away from the fence — a climbing plant is essentially a ramp for a snake. Even so, one finds its way in occasionally.
Not all the snakes are rattlesnakes — gopher snakes and kingsnakes work the property too, and we’re glad to have them. They’re the main thing keeping the rodent population in check.
We occasionally get a roving American bullfrog migrating between the neighborhood lakes, pools, and irrigation drains. They’re surprisingly large up close.
Roadrunners are regulars on the hillside — exactly as fast and purposeful as advertised. They mostly hunt lizards. The second photo shows one that just made a successful catch.
We hear great horned owls regularly — sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the nearby trees. Occasionally one will come down onto the hillside at dusk. They’re hunting the rodents drawn by the bird feeders, and they’re very good at it.
Sandy’s feeders attract an impressive variety of birds, but they also start a food chain that pulls in the predators. The seed attracts rodents, the rodents attract snakes, owls, and hawks. When Sandy traps a rat or mouse she sets it out in the yard — within minutes a crow comes to claim it. She figured this out one day when a crow was squawking at her insistently while she stood near a trap. She released the rat to see what would happen, and the crow had it before she made it back inside. Now it’s just part of the system.
Outside The Crosby
North County San Diego is less built up than the coast, and in a good spring the open fields come alive with wildflowers. Jake the dog had no complaints about that.
By late summer the fields dry out and become a serious fire hazard. A local goat herd rotates through to graze them down — one of the more effective low-tech ways to manage fire fuel loads in Southern California. A Great Pyrenees guards the herd. With coyotes this thick in the area, the dog earns its keep.
