Reappearing Mystic Lake attracts birds

Mystic LAKE sweeps across the San Jacinto Valley, lapping at meadows pungent with the scent of wet grass. Hummocks seem to float above steel-gray water. A white-tailed kite hovers overhead while killdeer and greater yellowlegs skim the mud below.

Three months ago this was a dusty salt flat in dairy country, 15 miles southeast of Riverside. But winter storms filled the shallow basin to form an instant wetland.

Fleeting and capricious, Mystic Lake appears every few years at the whims of weather, one of the last of many ephemeral water bodies that once covered 5 million acres of inland California, says Bob McLandress, president of the California Waterfowl Assn.

Today, about 90% of the marshes are gone.

Birds, thousands of them, flock to the lake, attracting bird watchers and hunters who know this spot, which is off Davis Road in the San Jacinto Wildlife Area.

“For many years I thought that Mystic Lake was a hidden haven,” says Tom Seward, 50, a sporting goods sales manager from Rancho Cucamonga, who has hunted at the lake since the early 1990s. “Few people knew about it; getting access was hard. But if you did, it was a little slice of heaven.”

Mystic Lake pools in a shallow depression of the San Jacinto River after heavy rain. Just 5 or 6 feet deep on average, the lake at its fullest covers more than 3,000 acres, spills over surrounding roads, and floods nearby duck ponds.

Even in dry years the rural San Jacinto Valley is an important stop on the Pacific Flyway. Open grasslands attract raptors while private duck clubs lure waterfowl when the lake is dry.

But when Mystic Lake emerges, it’s a naturally shimmering beacon for waterfowl.

“You add water to this place and there can be an amazing bloom of birds,” says wildlife biologist Chet McGaugh of Riverside.

On a recent afternoon, a northern harrier swoops over a patch of alkali goldfields, a deep yellow flower common at the lake. Red-tailed hawks circle above, ducks raft on the water, and a flock of curlew flap across nearby ponds.

Tony Metcalf, a biology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, says birders at Mystic Lake counted more than 150 species annually between 1990 and 2003, ranking the lake as a top U.S. monitoring site by the Audubon Society. The lake, though often dry, flooded three times in the 1990s, and was moist for most of the decade.

Hunters describe watching waves of waterfowl roll across the lake, wigeons plunging like hail, or a “teal ball” of greenwings crossing the surface. McGaugh counted four types of geese after a recent storm.

“It’s really an outstanding location for birds of prey, especially in wintertime,” says Tom Paulek, manager of the San Jacinto Wildlife Area, a state-owned reserve that includes the lake bed and surrounding grasslands.

Twenty-two species, including bald and golden eagles, osprey, peregrine falcons, six owl species and numerous hawks share the airspace, sometimes launching aerial battles or competing with hunters for their quarry.

“We saw a bald eagle fighting an osprey over a fish” in midair talon lock, says Carl Cupp, 47, of La Palma, a former president of Cazadores Duck Club of Mystic Lake.

Cupp, who enjoys hunting here, describes a common problem: “If you knocked a bird down, you had to get there quick before a harrier got it .... We called that giving one to the bird gods,” Cupp says.

The unpredictable nature of the lake has discouraged development.

In 1913, Frank Brown, cofounder of Redlands, erected “Brownlands” along the banks of Mystic Lake, according to author James T. Brown’s book “Riverside County.” Brown built the community during a dry year, but when the lake flooded, only “a few rooftops above the muddy waves” remained.

At one time, farmers diverted the San Jacinto River into earthen channels to irrigate fields, but the levees burst in storms, and the river reclaimed its natural course.

“The amazing thing is that the valley looks now like it did 100 years ago,” says Harold M. Hill, a Redlands physician who has hiked and hunted the Mystic Lake area since the 1930s. He was a founder of the San Bernardino chapter of the Audubon Society and the Mystic Lake Duck Club in the 1950s.

The lake mounts its own defenses against intrusion, veiling its surface in fog and leaving a moat of mud around the shore.

“The mud at that place is brutal,” Cupp says. “We got a truck stuck, and we went to get it with a tractor, and got the tractor stuck. The stuff is like glue.”

Seward describes fog so dense it blocks all view of the shore, leaving boaters floating aimlessly.

“I’ve been lost on that lake, spending hours in a fog bank, not knowing exactly where I was,” he says.

Because the lake can be inaccessible, locals say it provides solitude and serenity.

“Some areas are so beautiful ... just knowing that future generations can enjoy it means a lot to me,” says Margie Breitkreuz, chairwoman of the Moreno Valley Trails Advisory Board and a regular horse rider at Mystic Lake.

On a quiet morning the lake mirrors snowy Mt. San Jacinto and rolling green hills.

If you squint past power lines and dairy farms, you can almost see the lake as explorer Juan Bautista de Anza did in 1774 when he rode into the San Jacinto Valley and described “a large and pleasing lake, several leagues in circumference and as full of white geese as water.”