Preserve Shollenberger Park

Shollenberger Park, Petaluma, California. As a birder, I try to visit this park any time I am in the area. On the way home from our Valentine's Day trip, we spent maybe just 15 minutes before the rain started upsetting my binoculars, and in that 15 minutes I scored. The red-winged blackbirds were already starting their territorial displays, each claiming their small section of marsh, sounding off their varieties of calls and songs to either warn, threaten, or entice. Blood-red patches flashed like traffic lights for all the lady blackbirds to marvel over while competing males timidly retreat. I could have stood for hours trying to figure out which birds had the best patch, but instead turned my head to the attention of the water. Shollenberger provides a combination of marsh, lake, and estuary, with a variety of waterfowl, shorebirds, seabirds, raptors, and passerines, and if I wanted to see and I.D. each one, it would have taken the rest of the day to get halfway around the lake. I was first stuck on the interesting looking hybrid hanging with a canvasback. Then there was the island full of shorebirds -- willits, avocets, and stilts. In just about five minutes I saw buffleheads, gadwall, teals, sandpipers, gulls, sparrows, crows, and about a dozen other species I didn't get to. The nightcap was finding graceful white swans swimming in the marsh.

You don't know what you're going to find at Shollenberger on a given day. My first visit was not for birding, but for viewing western pond turtles as they competed with red sliders for basking spots, and to dream up thesis ideas. The park is a true gem surrounded by industrial parks and hotels. And it is in trouble. Our wetlands and the habitats they provide are getting fewer and fewer in California's Bay-Delta region, and that is creating a direct impact on the sensitive species they support. Yet the development or expansion of an asphalt factory, especially if there are less than sufficient environmental study and mitigation measures, could spell disaster for this precious wetland. I'll let Friends of Shollenberger Park, and a number of other web sites, tell it better than I can, as it is something to at least ponder.