Up in the hills to the west of Mount Burdell are the headwaters of Novato Creek, which then tumbles down through the rolling slopes until it runs into the Stafford Dam and forms the placid Stafford Lake. These waters of creek and lake invite myriad birds, both summer and winter.
Places
Olompali State Historic Park
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.
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.
Las Gallinas Ponds
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.
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.
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.