Once again, local and regional bird lovers are throwing a wild party for our migrating neighbors from the north at the peak of migration season.
Looking like decoys, a pair of cinnamon teal ducks viewed from a two-mile paved wheelchair accessible trail at Petaluma’s Shollenberger Park Wetlands. Photo by Bob Dyer
By Myrna Hayes
Published: February, 2010
This year the Flyway Festival will be held Friday, February 5 through Sunday, February 7 in Building 897 on Mare Island. Admission is free. Festival-goers will be able to choose from hundreds of fun activities, including a Family Wildlife Exploration and Birding Expo with over 100 exhibitors, learning sessions, birding and wild bird demonstrations, art and photography exhibits and food.
Take one of more than 20 guided outings on Mare Island, along with a self-guided wetland walk to the edge of San Pablo Bay. For the third season, Vaca Valley Volks will host an American Volkswalk Association-sanctioned 5k and 10k walk routed along wetland trails and through the historic and new neighborhoods of the former U.S. Navy shipyard founded in 1854.
Mare Island outings will include guided tours of the Navy’s oldest cemetery in the Pacific and Sierra Club guided walks to the Navy’s first arsenal in the Pacific, both founded more than 150 years ago. Both of these sites are located on the Island’s scenic south end in the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve—Solano County’s newest regional parkland—from which you can take in scenic vistas of seven counties from a hilltop vantage point. St. Peter’s Chapel, with the most Louis Comfort Tiffany-designed stained-glass windows under one roof in the western United States, will be open for tours, as will the Mare Island Museum and World War II’s only remaining landing craft support gunboat, docked along the Napa River/Mare Island Strait.
But, there’s more: the Flyway Festival offers more than 40 guided nature walks throughout Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Marin and other Bay Area counties as well as boat tours aboard Napa River Adventures.
Most Festival activities are free. Some require pre-registration. Hours: Friday outings occur throughout the day with a reception and program from 5:30 – 9 p.m. On Saturday and Sunday, the Wildlife Expo runs from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Regional outings occur throughout both Saturday and Sunday. Updated 2010 activities will be current on the event’s website. For more information and directions, visit SFBayflywayfestival.com or call 707-649-WING (9464). Hosted by Mare Island Heritage Trust, a project of Arc Ecology with our Festival Host Weston Solutions, Inc.
Birdwatchers will be on the lookout for red-tailed hawks like this one on a new 2-mile trail along Ellis Creek in Petaluma on guided outings during the Flyway Festival, February 5 and 6. Photo by Bob Dyer
A flock of shorebirds take flight over Napa-Sonoma Marshes State Wildlife Area along Highway 37 west of Vallejo. Photo by Kathleen Fenton
