Olompali State Historic Park encompasses a cluster of historical buildings and the wooded slopes that rise above them to the summit of Mount Burdell on the northern border of Novato. A moderately dense mixed oak woodland is the dominant ecosystem here, but the twists and turns of the park’s trails offer a gently varying array of plant and animal life.
Author: Jack
Big Year #3: Two Month Update
By the end of February, my Big Year bird count had climbed to 142 species. So where have I been spending my local birding time?
Five Ways to Use eBird to See More Birds
If you want to learn about the natural history of a place, there are several traditional sources of knowledge. But if you are particularly interested in birds and live in the present day, you have the fortunate advantage of an amazing resource called eBird.
Hawks II: Wildland Hawks
In part one of our guide to local hawks, I covered the “neighborhood raptors” – the daytime birds of prey you are most likely to see around your yard and typical residential areas. In this post, I’m covering another handful of local hawks: those which are unlikely to venture in amongst the houses and bustling humans, but which you can find in appropriate habitats within our larger Novato neighborhood.
Hawks I: Neighborhood Hawks
Hawks surround us, sometimes hiding in plain sight. In this post, I’ll introduce 4.5 of our most notable neighborhood raptors, all commonly seen throughout Novato and Marin County.
Indian Valley Open Space Preserve
Indian Valley Open Space Preserve is a modest slice of forested foothills on the north side of Big Rock Ridge. That significant barrier to the south comprises the main topographical influence here, casting its long shadow over Indian Valley’s web of trails and modest hills. The combination of general shadiness, low hills, and intervening creeks creates ideal conditions for broadleaf mixed evergreen forest, whose high level of tree and understory diversity translates into a correspondingly rich community of bird species.
Deer Island Open Space Preserve
Deer Island is not exactly an island, at least not anymore. These days it is a lightly-used open space preserve in eastern Novato, centered around a hill which rises from the surrounding flatlands which were once part of the Petaluma River delta. Compact and flat, but uncrowded and rather pastoral feeling: Deer Island has a modest but very real set of virtues that are not always easy to find in combination so close to town.
The Birds of Novato
What birds do we have here? The following list contains birds that can be regularly found in Novato. Some are more abundant than others and some can be more easily found in other parts of the county, but this list aims to convey what an interested amateur would be able to see in a given year with a moderate amount of effort and persistence.
Black Oak
As Aldo Leopold was in love with pines, I am in love with oaks. In California, this is fortunately not a rare sentiment. And for whatever accumulation of reasons and indefinite impulses of affection, no species of the genus draws me more forcefully than the California black oak.
Ten Backyard Bird Songs
Birds make many sounds to communicate. Often they will have different sounds to stay in contact, beg for food, or sound an alarm, for example. But most well known is the phenomenon of song: these longer, more complex, sometimes musical series of notes are the center of spring’s soundtrack. Here are ten of our most common backyard singers.