Each palm-size owl caught is a rush, not only because it is an encounter in the dark with pure wildness. Saw-whets are one of ...

Arboreal salamander (Aneides lugubris). Jeremiah Degenhardt via iNaturalist, CC BY-NC 4.0 One day, while poking around beneath a pot in my family’s backyard, I discovered a glistening arboreal ...

Pastures are visible from a derelict milking barn at the historic D Ranch, founded in 1870 and abandoned after the creation of Point Reyes National Seashore. There’s an ambitious plan to restore these ...

A Monterey pine forest where wild Pinus radiata var. radiata still grows at Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, one of three locations in California where the pine naturally occurs. (Photo by Janet ...

We’re peering down into a ravine carved out by Lagunitas Creek, looking for North American river otters. According to official California Department of Fish and Wildlife records, last updated in 1995, ...

Pistachio orchards, like these at Gilkey Ranch near Five Points, California, are producing the nut of the future, say farmers, because the crop goes dormant during drought and demands less water and ...

Spire, an installation made from felled cypress logs by organic artist Andy Goldsworthy, greets the morning surrounded by a reforested grove of Monterey cypress seedlings. These plots are part of an ...

Yellowfin gobies, washed up on Lake Merritt's shore at the height of the bloom. (Courtesy of Damon Tighe) “That’s the million dollar question for people that study phytoplankton — why now, and why ...

Winnemem Wintu Chief Caleen Sisk conducts a blessing ceremony at the confluence of Cow Creek and the Sacramento River during Run4Salmon. Sisk envisions a volitional fish passage up Cow Creek, which ...

The Wizard Nebula, also known as NGC 7380, is a beautiful emission nebula in the constellation Cepheus. (Jeremy Miller) It’s 7 p.m. on a crisp October evening. My telescope is set up in the backyard, ...

Monarchs roost on a eucalyptus tree at Moran Lake in Santa Cruz. (Stuart Weiss, Ph.D.) Audrey Fusco can’t help getting excited at the sight of one monarch butterfly these days. In the spring sun in ...