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.
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.
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.