Birding in Marin, Season 10 – Trip 1 Saturday, January 4, 2025 8:30 AM to mid afternoon Birding with Jim White and Bob Battagin Register HERE for this Field Trip Registration required. Registration opens at 8 AM on December 26 Bob and I are leading our Birding in Marin monthly first Saturday field trips for the tenth season sponsored by the MAS. Please join us as we go birding with a goal of finding and sharing 100 species at two of our prime wintering habitats for ducks, shorebirds, raptors and sparrows. Las Gallinas is a great example of generating wildlife habitat with ample human access. This will be a 2 mile walk over a wide, flat packed dirt walkway with plenty of scope views to share closeups. The Hamilton wetlands have been restored with intelligence, sensitivity, and precision. The birds and wildlife have appreciated this and come back in numbers that we expect to share. The walk is flat over a wide, mostly paved walkway, accessible via a ramp. DIRECTIONS: From Hwy 101 in northern San Rafael take Smith Ranch Road east about a mile, just crossing the tracks turn left and park in 1/2 mile near the east end. Meet at Las Gallinas VSD parking lot.

Friday, January 10, 2025 10 AM to 1:30 PM Birding with Daniel Edelstein Register HERE for this Field Trip Registration required. Registration opens at 8 AM on December 31, 2024 Daniel invites you to discover the joy of a wilderness-like paradise — Skaggs Island Road — that often attracts dozens of shorebird and duck family members, in addition to uncommon, visiting non-breeding raptors such as Rough-legged Hawk, Ferruginous Hawk, and Merlin (along with sightings of White-tailed Kite and other raptor species). Skaggs Island Road has flat, level hiking for no more than 1.5 miles; bring your lunch, we’ll eat at the bridge approximately 0.6 mile from the parking area at Hwy 37. DIRECTIONS: Closed to the public, Skaggs Island Road is accessed by meeting our group in the parking area adjacent to Hwy 37 (approximately 3 miles east of Reclamation Rd and 2 miles east of the Hwy 121/Sears Point Raceway intersection (at the stoplight). We’ll meet on the north side of Hwy 37 where it intersects with Skaggs Island Road. Here’s a map link that shows where we’ll meet: https://bit.ly/3YYIJeg. Please be careful turning into this road when coming from Marin County. Oncoming traffic is often heavy.

Birding in Marin, Season 10 – Trip 2 Saturday, February 1, 2025 8:30 AM to mid afternoon Birding with Jim White and Bob Battagin Register HERE for this Field Trip Registration required. Registration opens at 8 AM on January 22 We get a fine view of the San Francisco Bay waters from the small park at Harbor Point and the nearby rocky shoreline. Some grebes, loons, gulls, cormorants and a few shorebirds are often visible. We hope for Black Turnstones and a Spotted Sandpiper. We will walk or take the short drive to see if Sausalito’s Yellow Crowned Night Heron has returned for another winter, usually offering a direct comparison to our Black-crowned Night Heron. We then intend to drive the 2 miles to Fort Baker under the West end of the Golden Gate Bridge to see birds in the active bay mouth and the calmer Coast Guard boat harbor. We wonder if the Wandering Tattler will be spending another winter on the breakwater. Bring lunch for a quick break for our final stop at Strawberry Point, a rather new development with a fine public path along the Richardson Bay shore. This portion of San Francisco Bay is protected from boating, hunting and fishing, so many diving ducks spend some of the winter there. If the herring are running this can be an active space. DIRECTIONS: Meet at 8:30 at the bay end of Harbor Drive. From Bridgeway in North Sausalito take Harbor Drive to the ample parking lot at its bay end.