Story

I am lying half-awake in the Berkeley dawn, with my windows open and the cool breath of the Bay washing through the neighborhood. A bright cascade of notes slides through my window, like a small orchestra beginning to tune itself. These are not the bird calls that I’ve been hearing all winter—the air is alive […]

It started with a sound — a sharp, electric zeeeep!  Then I saw him: a male Anna’s hummingbird, not much larger than my thumb, had just landed on a thin telephone wire above our Berkeley porch. His gorget blazed crimson-magenta in the morning sun, shifting to deep rose as he angled his head. After a

Earlier this winter, driving between Oakland and Berkeley, I happened to look up and discovered that the sky above me was thick with crows. For several long minutes, I continued north while the river of crows flowed southward—perhaps thousands of them streaming along the length of Martin Luther King Junior Way. Since then, I’ve been

Last week, sports fans were busy celebrating the Super Bowl – but Bay Area nature lovers know we’ve got something even better to celebrate: our own spectacular lineup of “superb owls.” And unlike the big game, owl season lasts all year long in Northern California. Thanks to the dedicated work of organizations like Point Blue

On a bright, brisk July morning, the sand dunes at North Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore look empty at first glance—just wind-etched hills of sand, blown beachgrass, and the steady roar of the Pacific. But if you know what to look for, as Ryan DiGaudio does, signs of life start to appear. “There,” he

It is winter now in the Hamilton Wetlands, with enormous King Tides muscling deep into the marshes and ebbing again to reveal shining expanses of mudflats where Black-Necked Stilts parade on long legs and American Avocets probe the shallows with elegant upturned bills. A briny smell rises in the damp air, and pickleweed sprawls across

As I write this, I’m far from the “shadow of the bridge,” sitting on the opposite side of the country as San Francisco Bay. Windows open, I can hear the Atlantic lapping at the shore of Brighton Beach, and a lone Osprey is riding the wind among a flock of urban paragliders. But tonight—a colorful

The first sign came in the darkness, long after sunset on a cool evening in early September. I lay in my Berkeley home, windows open to catch the bay breeze, when I heard them—the shrill, rattling cries of Elegant Terns cutting through the night air. Kree-eek, kree-eek—they called as they swarmed overhead, invisible messengers announcing

In a photo that Dick Evans recently snapped, a Black Phoebe swoops low over a pond at Las Gallinas. The green surface of the water is dimpled from the movement of the bird’s wings; the phoebe’s feathers splay out in a translucent fan. A single bead of flung water is suspended in the image—all of

When Dick Evans and I emerged from the Ornithology Collection on our research visit to the California Academy of Sciences, we found ourselves wandering the halls of the academy, reluctant to leave, our heads buzzing with new information. We ducked into an exhibit in a side room, where bright displays shone in luminous cases along