Near the north edge of Yolo County, a little-known birding hotspot lies along County Road 98A where it meets State Highway 45.  A grove of big valley oaks along the highway tapers into a line of trees, mainly along the east side of the road, with a wide drainage canal

Why does Audubon California support cattle ranching, when some believe that cattle production and beef consumption are bad for the planet? For an answer, look no further than the hills northwest of Winters, to Bobcat Ranch.  Although it may look like an ordinary cattle ranch, its grazing program aims to improve

Submitted by Sonjia Shelly, YAS Board In early 2020, the Yolo Audubon Society board was approached by two local organizations (Friends of North Davis Channel and Woodland Regional Preserve) to fund and install song bird nest boxes in their respective areas. The YAS board provided the funding for needed materials,

Combined with the wastewater treatment ponds next door, North Regional Pond is a top birding destination in Yolo County. With 210 species recorded in eBird*, it is one of only eight sites in Yolo with over two hundred kinds of birds. In the last year it has offered us rarities

Nearly all of the world’s tricolored blackbirds nest in the Central Valley and nearby foothills.  Yolo County has been home to several breeding colonies in recent years, totaling twenty thousand or so adults, and often with large numbers in winter as well.  Thus, Yolo Audubon has an unusually direct stake

From 1912 to 1923, Joseph Grinnell and fellow ornithologists at UC Berkeley surveyed birdlife in spring and summer at forty-one stations in the Central Valley, producing a baseline list of the breeding birds of the region. One hundred years later, another UC Berkeley group revisited the same stations at the

Placement of nest boxes for small songbirds along the Putah Creek corridor has had a history of success. Birds fledge young from them in large numbers, year after year (see this column, February 2017). A recent string of boxes in the heart of Davis has been likewise well received by

The complex of wildfires in late summer that burned large swathes of Yolo, Solano, Napa and other counties devoured oak woodland, forest and chaparral indiscriminately. Wanting a sense of the effects of those fires on the birds of the area, Steve Hampton and I pored over reports from birders around the

The Sacramento Bypass Wildlife Area (along County Road 126, off River Road just north of the city of West Sacramento) is an excellent birding spot, with 197 species reported on eBird. This large bird list reflects the presence a strip of forest at the foot of the north levee of

In most Yolo County landscapes, birds are usually hidden from view, while fly-overs are often too distant to be identified by eye. And some birds fly by night. In all those instances, birding by ear is essential for knowing who they are, and thus essential for better understanding of the

In the field of endangered species management, the term Safe Harbor refers to agreements with the US Fish and Wildlife Service by which a landowner voluntarily improves or expands habitat for a species and, sometime later, can decide to return the property to its original condition without penalty. The aim