Many people, including Doug McConnell himself, would say he led a charmed life. And he did, but it came to a close in January ...

The parrots of San Francisco have ancestors from two species that hail from two completely separate parts of South America.

POST has purchased more than 6,000 acres of oak woodlands near Gilroy, saving it from becoming a sand and gravel mine. It’s ...

At some point during my decades of watching and researching hawks in the Marin Headlands, I began to notice insects. At first it was butterflies: migrating monarchs, local pipe-vine swallowtails, ...

Two moth enthusiasts chat about getting started with mothing.

After the Buttes erupted, from about 1.4 million to 630,000 years ago, a vast freshwater lake filled the Central Valley. Cleo Vilett In the vast flatness of the Sacramento Valley, encircled by a ...

Britta Shoot is a San Francisco–based writer covering everything from culture and travel to the environment. Estero Americano Coast Preserve is home to migrating birds, rare grasses, and in the spring ...

Perhaps this spring you’ll make it to the coast and find yourself calmed by the waves cresting and crashing ashore, a drama that repeats and repeats. But consider the sea star: relentless pounding as ...

Among life’s small, durable joys is the discovery of a bird’s nest: perhaps in the shape of a bowl, woven from grasses and stems with a skill that seems inexplicable. How could a creature with such a ...

To the uninformed, they might look like giant puddles left behind by the last winter storm. But the 20 visitors gathered on the lower slopes of Sonoma Mountain on an overcast morning in early March ...

California Forever, under its subsidiary Flannery Associates, has purchased more than one tenth of Solano County's land over the past decade, including this field next to Highway 113. Amir Aziz / Bay ...