Mark's Notebook

Miracle of Coyote Gulch

San Francisco Chronicle

Old dump in Presidio ravine now a haven for wildlife

by Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer

A new push for restoration at the Presidio is turning toxic-waste dumps into wildlife habitat. The National Park Service, using $99 million from the former owner, the U.S. Army, is fixing up the 1,480-acre Presidio an acre at a time.

Watching the bird life with binoculars from Lincoln Boulevard, just north of the Baker Beach turnoff, San Francisco birder Josiah Clark is rattling off sightings.

Clark spotted a metallic green Anna's hummingbird with its rosy throat perched on the scrub. A common raven was patrolling the ground for rodents, and an American kestrel alighted on a post at Battery Crosby, an old military fortification. Red-tailed hawks were sparring in a Monterey cypress on a bluff overlooking the ravine.

From this spot where the narrow mouth of the Golden Gate stands in full view -- with the bridge invisible to the north -- Clark has seen harbor porpoises, surf scoters, red-throated loons and western grebes.

But it's the bird song unique to the local dunes that pleases Clark, a consulting ecologist who has worked on Presidio restoration for the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy.

One by one, he picked out the whistle of the Nuttall's white-crowned sparrow, the melodic call of the bright yellow meadowlark and the tinkling note of the bushtit. On the wind, he heard the trill of the song sparrow, the black phoebe's "fee-bee'' and the Bewick's wren's "peety, peety, peety.''

"The birds like a wet spot with a bunch of rushes,'' Clark said.

"Lots of birds are migrating through here. You add this new landscape and it bumps up the capacity for nesting in the Presidio.''

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/09/PRESIDIO.TMP&nl=top

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Last updated Monday 3 August 2009