The Las Gallinas Wildlife Ponds is the birding community’s name for the complex of water treatment ponds, tidal mudflats, salt marsh, and agricultural fields around the Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District plant in San Rafael. Learn more about perhaps the most popular birding site in the county in this guest post from Susan Kelly.
Author: Jack
Hamilton Wetlands
The Hamilton Wetlands have not merely been preserved, but actually re-created. It is unusual—and therefore particularly gratifying—to encounter a huge, expensive, and ambitious feat of engineering whose beneficiaries include plovers and pintail as well as humans.
Indian Tree Open Space Preserve
If you love quiet and uncrowded paths, find happiness in even modest forests, and value the deepening immersion of a walk into the woods more than a spectator’s seat on the mere sidelines of nature, then Indian Tree offers rewards found nowhere else in Novato.
Big Year #2: Three Week Update
Earlier this month, I introduced my undertaking of a “Thoreauvian Big Year,” an attempt to see as many bird species as possible this year within a ~10 mile radius of my home in southern Novato, while transporting myself only by feet and bike rather than big gas-powered machines. Today, I’ll tell you about where I went and what I found en route to the first 115 species, which might give you some ideas about the best winter sites to visit in the Novato area if you want to see some new birds.
California Buckeye
The California buckeye is distinctive, easily recognized, and easily loved. More than a few novice tree lovers pick it out early on in their dendrological lives as somehow meriting a special affection. My own experience was no different.
Big Year #1: I Commence my Thoreauvian Big Year
This year, I’m aiming to see more or less all the birds that occur in this neck of the woods. More precisely, I’m planning a new twist on the classic birding challenge in which one attempts to see as many species as possible between the first day of January and the last day of December: I call it the Thoreauvian Big Year.
Rush Creek
Rush Creek Open Space Preserve on the northern border of Novato offers several hundred acres of public wetlands and woodlands, but is set alongside several thousand more acres of protected land together comprising the largest natural tidal brackish marsh in California,
Bahia Lagoon
Marin Audubon Society’s restoration project at the Bahia wetlands in northern Novato is an underappreciated site that escapes many birders’ notice due to its small size, out of the way location, and independence from more well-known park systems. But it’s a gem, with unique waterbirds that prefer this near-the-bay site above all others in our region.
