Point Reyes National Seashore
July 08, 2012 by Bay Nature Staff
This spectacular peninsula delights visitors with wild coastal beaches, dramatic rocky headlands, rich estuaries, open grasslands, and forested ridges.
Because …
Latest from Point Reyes National Seashore
Fearless with Feathers
July 05, 2012 by Paul Epstein
Rich Stallcup is viewed by the ornithological community as a “legend in his own time” for the breadth and depth of his knowledge, and for his commitment to education and conservation. He is one of the founders of Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now PRBO Conservation Science). We spoke with Stallcup about his largely self-taught background in ornithology and about PRBO’s work.
Point Reyes: Palomarin to Bear Valley
July 04, 2012 by Jules Evens
Last night, for the first time in their 132-year rivalry, the San Francisco Giants swept the L.A. Dodgers with a shutout. This morning my granddaughter, Kalia, took her first steps and the Supreme Court upheld “Obamacare.” To celebrate, I decided to take a long “walkabout.”
Crowning Glories: 50 Years of Point Reyes
July 02, 2012 by Jules Evens
Point Reyes for millennia provided rich habitat to a diversity of plant and animal species. Its discovery and settlement by Europeans and then Americans altered the landscape, but not irretrievably. And thanks to some determined visionaries, the peninsula and its habitats were protected 50 years ago.
Letter from the Publisher
July 01, 2012 by David Loeb
Point Reyes, the spectacular park that turns 50 this year, is also the reason I decided to stay in the Bay Area after coming for a visit decades ago.
Point Reyes: Renewed by Fire
July 01, 2012 by David Rains Wallace
When I started visiting Point Reyes in the 1970s, the landscape from Limantour Beach up to the crest of Inverness Ridge had a special appeal. I had spent my early childhood in the New England countryside in the 1940s, so vestiges of the pre-Seashore ranching days made me nostalgic–homestead sites, dammed lakes, fence lines, timothy hay growing in old fields. On the other hand, watching the wild ecosystem come back, with its brush rabbits, jackrabbits, quail, hawks, and bobcats, was endlessly fascinating.
Point Reyes: Fidel’s Place
July 01, 2012 by Greg Sarris
Three days after the Indian–I’ll call him Fidel–avenged the assault on his wife and slayed the young rancher who’d committed the horrible deed, the posse of vigilantes pursuing him found him, not near the small settlement of Marshall, but across Tomales Bay on a ridge; and not in a thicket of coyote bush and low-growing fir where he might’ve hidden, but in the middle of an open grassland.
Point Reyes: Taken by Surprise
July 01, 2012 by Judith Larner Lowry
The shrublands of the Point Reyes National Seashore, which include the northern coastal scrub and maritime chaparral, hooked me long ago with their vibrant charms. Found on slopes within the influence of the sea, they hug the land as tightly as a knitted sweater, shrugging off the challenges of wind, salt spray, and fog.
Point Reyes: Fingers of the Sea
July 01, 2012 by Jules Evens
Dawn. Spring tide. Fog shrouds the estuary. A shore-cast tree trunk–contorted, branching skyward–rests in the shallows. On its twisted branches roost a half-dozen cormorants, some with wings outstretched or akimbo, others standing upright, necks coiled into graceful question marks. That congregation, silhouetted by the morning light, suspended on the rising tide between the pewter sky and the mercurial bay, conjures a prehistoric diorama, a world awaiting sunlight parables.
Minus tides expose wilderness below the waves
June 28, 2012 by Claire Peaslee
Point Reyes Peninsula is rimmed along its rocky sections with a living fringe so diverse and wildly colorful – so dense with phenomenal creatures – that when the tides recede there’s a gravitational pull to go there and explore. Tidepools are literally the wilderness next door, yet accessible only when the moon and sun conspire to exert extra pull on the Earth’s oceanic sheath, thereby exposing the coastline. May through July is one of the two periods in the year when extreme low tides occur.
