The San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival, headquartered on Mare Island in Vallejo, is the Bay Area’s only 3-day celebration of the annual migration of waterfowl and shorebirds along the Pacific Flyway. In its tenth year, the Festival has attracted a loyal regional following. Participants are attracted to the Flyway Festival – in spite of it being held in the dead of the winter – because that is when migration through the San Francisco Bay is at its peak...
By Myrna Hayes, Flyaway festival Co-founder and Coordinator
Published: January, 2006
The San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival, headquartered on Mare Island in Vallejo, is the Bay Area’s only 3-day celebration of the annual migration of waterfowl and shorebirds along the Pacific Flyway. In its tenth year, the Festival has attracted a loyal regional following. Participants are attracted to the Flyway Festival – in spite of it being held in the dead of the winter – because that is when migration through the San Francisco Bay is at its peak.
As many as 250,000 waterfowl migrate or winter here each year, and the Bay is the greatest stopover on the Pacific Flyway for shorebirds, hosting over 1-million bird visits each year. Mare Island and its adjacent Napa River is the over-wintering site for 70 percent of the canvasback ducks migrating on the Pacific Flyway. For this and many other critical habitats, this spot has been designated as a Globally Important Bird Area.
Flyway fledges
The Flyway Festival’s fledgling beginning was in November 1996, just six months after the closure of Mare Island Naval Shipyard - the first U.S. Naval installation in the Pacific - founded in 1854. With funding for just one year, the Flyway Festival began as a project of Save The Bay, to raise public awareness of the unique mosaic of farmlands and protected wildlife habitat that makes up more than 50,000 acres of non-urbanized tidal and seasonal wetlands and former tidal marsh in the delta of San Pablo Bay, a little known bay, even though it is the largest of the bays of water that constitute the San Francisco Bay Estuary.
Navy legacies
The Flyway Festival has grown to be eagerly anticipated by participants from throughout the region and beyond, and is heralded as one of the most unique in the nation for its mix of opportunities for wildlife viewing and walks through history at the former shipyard (designated by the National Park Service as a National Historic Landmark), an honor bestowed on only the most significant places in American history. The Navy has left vast acreage at Mare Island (more than 4,000 acres of undeveloped lands). A majority of these areas are still off-limits to the public because of continuing environmental remediation. However, the Flyway Festival provides a once-a-year preview of things to come and places of the past.
Natural entertainment
Although this yearly migration celebration is called a festival, our event is different. Our entertainment is nature-based. That is, learning about wildlife and their habitats and viewing wildlife up close is our entertainment. As many as 7,000 people now join with us in a weekend of environmental education, wildlife discovery, wild lands exploration and historic and cultural interpretation. Activities include a welcoming reception, art show, bird watching, nature hikes, tours of historic Mare Island, hands-on exhibits, live-bird visits, seminars and film presentations by leading scientists who conduct research along the Pacific Flyway and design and create habitat restorations.
Festival for all
The Flyway Festival is geared toward beginning and intermediate birders. Many outings are led by a naturalist. Guided wetland walks are scheduled for families, outings offered for wheelchair users, birding identification classes for children and a separate session for adults.
More than 50 contributors and more than 100 volunteers guide over 50 outings throughout the Bay Area, and conduct the Wildlife and Birding Expo on Mare Island.
When the Festival was founded in 1996, it was purposefully headquartered in Vallejo, a town that, along with many of its neighbors, was reeling from the economic and emotional effects of the closure of Mare Island Naval Shipyard. We are proud that the Flyway Festival has remained true to its roots — free, family-oriented and nature and heritage focused.
What Have You Been Missing?
If you have never looked up close into the eyes of a hawk, made possible because of high powered optical lenses and an experienced guide, or sat inches from an injured and rehabbed education bird and its handler…if you have never listened before dawn for the call of the California clapper rail — every bit as haunting as the call of the loon…if you have never experienced the thrill of walking along a part of the Bay’s shore — off-limits to the public for nearly 150 years due to military munitions storage, but possible now with an escort…if you have not stood at the edge of a massive drydock built by men and shovels, carts, horses and oxen — all of carved granite stones quarried in Placer County, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places…if you have not stood in silent awe in St. Peter’s Chapel, the nation’s oldest Navy chapel, surrounded by an estimated $30 million of Tiffany stained-glass and memorial plaques in brass and wood…well, you must not have visited the Flyway Festival, yet!
To request a schedule, please visit the website www.sfbayflywayfestival.com or call (707) 649-WING(9464).
Flyaway Festival a Harbinger of New Regional Economic Base
For nearly 10 seasons, attendance at the Flyaway Festival has steadily increased, from 1,500 in 1996 to more than 7,000 in January 2005. Thus, by attracting repeat visitors to the former shipyard, the Festival is making a critical stop-gap economic contribution to offset some of the revenue loss posed by the departure of the military,
If you are not familiar with the economic data on birding and wildlife viewing, according to the recent National Survey on Recreation and the Environment, more than 70 million Americans now count themselves as bird-watchers, and in the process fuel a $20 billion industry.
The Flyaway Festival is one of the largest events in this area; and interest in bird-watching is booming in this country. In the past 20 years, the number of birders more than tripled.
In the next 50 years, according to Texas A & M University sociologist Steven H. Murdock, birding will be the only major outdoor pastime to experience growth at a faster rate than the population at large.
