Crab Cove Visitor Center

Explore a few cool adaptations of an EBRPD resident, the botta's pocket gopher, and learn about their big ecological impact.

Beach Restoration and New Year Walk along the SFBay Trail

City Raptors There are more birds of prey hunting in urban areas than many people realize. The most common in East Bay cities is the medium-sized Cooper’s hawk. While larger raptors are more at risk of crashing into buildings, power lines and trees, the Cooper’s hawk is very agile and small enough to navigate the crowded landscape of cities and forests. ... Its wings are relatively wide and its tail is long, making it a quick and acrobatic flyer able to change directions and speed easily. Its main prey is other birds, so it needs to be stealthy and fast to catch them. At Crab Cove, we are sometimes alerted to a Cooper’s hawk’s presence by the noisy crows harassing and trying to scare it away.

New year’s Eve Fire-Free Rockets!

You can always find some fun-to-watch creature at the Crab Cove pond.

Hocus Pocus Compostus!

Oxygen factories!

The fastest animal in the world is more common than you may think, but it wasn't always that way!

The Ladybird has no clothes... Just kidding! This ladybird is fully dressed even though she has no spots. Her full name is Cycloneda sanguinea and she is native to California. Like many of her 6,000 cousins world-wide, this beetle loves to munch on garden pests like aphids and scale insects. While we don't recommend purchasing ladybirds, we do advise attracting them to your green spaces by leaving leaf litter, avoiding pesticides, and learning to recognize their crocodile-looking larvae... For more information on attracting ladybirds to your yard, please check out: https://www.gardenmyths.com/buy-ladybugs-garden/

Heat Trapping Blanket Basics

After the first fall rains, when the sun warms the earth, winged western subterranean termites (Reticulitermes Hesperus) emerge from the ground in large numbers and fly away to form new nesting colonies. Birds and other animals gorge on these easy-to-catch wood eaters during the short-term frenzy. Termites are important decomposers crucial to food webs and nutrient cycling, so please observe them with respect unless you know for sure that a colony is eating the wood in your home.

Find out some ways you can help monarch butteflies- their numbers have declined!