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So fun! It was a treat to poke around the fire trails for all things tiny and eight-legged. We saw turret spiders’ holes, crab spiders, and many others. And finally, at the very end of the hike we saw ...

Nearly a dozen chinook salmon have swum the 12 miles upstream from the San Francisco Bay through Alameda Creek into Niles Canyon—likely the first salmon to spawn there in 30 years, according to Jeff ...

Since 2000, Julian Wood has perfected the art of not falling into the hidden channels that weave through the Bay’s tidal marshes. Come early spring tides, the San Francisco Bay program leader at the ...

An Alameda whipsnake, doing its thing: climbing. Scientists have suggested that using traps hung in trees might improve their efforts to find this elusive and semi-arboreal snake. (Angel ...

Later this year, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band—Indigenous people whose ancestors lived throughout the river valleys that stretch inland from Monterey Bay—will reclaim land within the tribe’s historical ...

A money spider (Tenuiphantes sp.) balloons, under controlled conditions, from its daisy perch. You can see the trichobothria (leg hairs) and dragline silk in this picture. (Michael Hutchinson via ...

A less-frequently spotted Vespula in our area: the forest yellowjacket (Vespula acadica). (Tony Tiwane via iNaturalist, CC-BY-NC) Ask almost anyone about yellowjackets; they will have a harrowing tale ...

Examining the human-engineered oyster substrate at Giant Marsh during a low tide in May 2025. (Sonya Bennett Brandt) This piece was originally published in KneeDeep Times, a digital magazine featuring ...

Jeff Miller stands atop the fish barrier at the base of Niles Community Park as they rescue stranded steelhead in 2016. (Courtesy of Jeff Miller) In the summer of 1997, Jeff Miller went for a long ...