5 Festive Ways to Support Native Wildlife

5 Festive Ways to Support Native Wildlife 

at Living Coast Discovery Center

1) Make a List and Check it TwiceLC15637_AnimalWishList_Logo_v4

The animals that call the Living Coast home need your help! Your gift can purchase food, animal care equipment, specialized veterinary care, and more for our animal ambassadors that cannot be released into the wild. Check out our Animal Wish List

banner2) Stuff Stockings with Discovery

Memberships make the perfect gift! Give your loved ones memories for a lifetime with a membership to The Living Coast. There are membership levels that fit every family. Members receive special benefits like behind-the-scenes tours, discounts, and member-only events. Give the gift of Discovery!

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3) Spread Holiday Cheer

Use the code CARDSFORCAUSES to receive 50% off your purchase and the Living Coast will receive 50% of the proceeds!  Picaboo’s Cards for Causes offers hundreds of designs to create a special holiday card and support the Living Coast’s mission at the same time. Create your Cards that Care!

Want to make an even bigger impact? Make your purchase on Giving Tuesday (Nov 27) and Picaboo will match the donation 100%!

4) Gather Together for a Family FeastNew Year's Eve 2019 _Final (1)

Dine out with a purpose and celebrate Giving Tuesday at two family-friendly restaurants on November 27! Up to 33% of proceeds support the animals at the Living Coast when you show your flyer at California Pizza Kitchen in Fashion Valley  (all day) or Chipotle in Chula Vista (4 p.m. to 8 p.m.) Let’s Eat for Change!

5) Wrap Gifts with a Smile   amazon living coast

It’s a cyber celebration all year long when you select the Living Coast on AmazonSmile! Give generously to those you love and the Living Coast receives 0.5% all eligible purchases made at smile.amazon.com. Unwrap the gifts on everyone’s list!

Bats in San Diego

Bat Week | Bats in San Diego  

bats-cv-1500x632.jpgHave you ever wondered what it would be like to fly like a bird?  Well, birds aren’t the only flying animals we see in the sky.  At dusk and throughout the night until dawn, the owls aren’t the only ones awake!  They share the sky with a truly unique nocturnal mammal that most people know of but are rarely seen.  They are the only mammals capable of true flight: introducing the BAT! 

75121-050-6CBFE9B5With 23 species found in San Diego County, you might be wondering where they all are.  Firstly, bats are “nocturnal” meaning they are active throughout the night from dusk to dawn.  To contrast, animals that are awake in the day are called “diurnal”.  But if you stay up all night, it doesn’t guarantee you will see a bat.  You need to know where to look first!  21 of the 23 species of bats in San Diego eat insects (“insectivores”).  The other two rely on nectar to survive.  So you need to look for places that insects might gather – the tops of trees, clearings, open spaces around a water source, etc.  You will often see bats flying in groups using “echolocation” to find their food and navigate their surroundings. 

Echolocation is a special adaptation bats and some other animals (eg. dolphins) use to help detect food or obstacles in their path.  It is what allows bats to navigate and find food in the dark.  They emit a sound from their mouth or nose and that sound then bounces off an object and is reflected back to the ears of the animal, and that animal can then sense what is in front of them, how big it is, if it is moving, etc.  It is a way for bats to visualize their surroundings without any light to see by. Pallid-bat-Photos

The big question you might have is that since bats are so hard to find, how do we know what species are in an area?  How do we study them?  The Living Coast Discovery Center is involved in a project that will help answer this question and allow us to learn more about the bat populations on Sweetwater Marsh.  With our partners at the San Diego Natural History Museum, a project has been in place for over a year to try to detect a species of bat called the pallid bat (Antrozous pallidus).  To find out what bats are in the area, the researchers use sounds to identify the different species.  Five “AnaBat” detectors were set up around our site and they recorded the echolocation sounds that the bats made and the information was later downloaded and interpreted.

Although no pallid bats have been detected on Sweetwater Marsh so far, there are 10 other species confirmed to be in the area including some that are a California species of special concern.  Although information is still being collected and interpreted, what we learned is that there is more bat activity on Sweetwater Marsh than was previously expected! 

Try looking up at the sky around dusk to see if you can catch a glimpse of the elusive bats of San Diego!

Antrozous pallidus bat

by Lindsay Bradshaw, Animal Care Department, Living Coast Discovery Center

Caring for Caracara

By Lindsay Bradshaw, Animal Care Manager 

Kuzco came to us from Sky Hunters, a raptor rehabilitation center in Alpine, Calif.  He is a Northern crested caracara and the newest member of our avian family here at the Living Coast.  He had an injury to one of his wings, making full flight difficult and rendering him non-releasable. Sometimes just called a Northern caracara or crested caracara, these birds actually belong to the falcon family.  It can be confusing though, because they look like a long-legged hawk, and behave very much like a vulture, feeding on carrion (dead stuff).  These birds are mostly found throughout Mexico, Central America, and northern South America, but have been occasional visitors to the San Diego region.  Some birds have actually been filmed and photographed in the Tijuana estuary and Tijuana River Valley.  They are commonly seen in southern Texas and Arizona in the United States and are r20170316_135803arely seen in California, but it does happen!

TAKING CARE OF KUZCO AND HIS FRIENDS

All the birds at the Living Coast are rescued and non-releasable, sometimes traveling to us from as far away as New York and Georgia!  From having different injuries to being imprinted on humans, the birds would be unable to survive in the wild or without human care.  We like to think of the Living Coast as a bit of a retirement home for these birds, many of whom are very old.  It is a sanctuary for them to live out the rest of their days in comfort, with gourmet rats and mice served every day, and act as ambassadors to their species by providing thousands of people each year with up-close encounters of the “bird” kind.

We get a lot of questions about what we feed our birds here at the Living Coast and if we ever provide them with live food.  The answer is no, we do not offer live food.  There are some reasons for this, but the main one is that if we put a live mouse in the enclosure, it would just run away before the bird had a chance to catch it.  Many of our birds also lack the ability to catch prey, either because they were imprinted at a young age and were never taught how to hunt, or because their injuries prevent them from being able to hunt successfully.  Another reason we feed non-live food is because we weigh it out every day so we know how much the birds are eating.  This is vital to their health.  The last reason we don’t feed live food is because mice and rats have sharp teeth and could fight back, injuring our birds in the process.  One reason our birds live so long is because they are kept safe from injuries, which could cause infections leading to illness or even death.  Kuzco’s favorite food seems to be a nice big rat, and every now and again, a hardboiled egg.