Date: 9/1/25 2:04 pm From: Dave Compton via groups.io <davcompton60...> Subject: [sbcobirding] El Capitan access
I went to El Cap this morning after a short, uneventful visit to Refugio State Beach. If you drive by the entrance road at El Cap, you'll see there's construction going on there, and it might look like there's no access. But while there's no vehicle access, you CAN walk outside the construction area and down to the beach, crossing to the east side of the creek where the road turns west. If you can get into the campground, it's only via the beach.
The birding was unexceptional: no land bird migrants, but there was a little bathing spot in the creek that you could watch from the path between the road and the beach.
The project is the widening of the entrance road, as many of you may know. Currently, the road bridge over El Cap has been removed, and it doesn't look like they've even started the new one. They HAVE built a new path on the west side of the entrance road that is part of the current access--a raised cement path on top of stone in an area that used to be part of the oak woodland. So, some habitat has been sacrificed for access. The new path has some places where you can see to the creek, which may be interesting for birding in the future. It's surprising this sort of project would happen in the coastal zone, since this is all considered sensitive habitat. I suppose State Parks probably leveraged the need to maintain access to their facilities.
