Vallejo Vignettes – Birding in Vallejo

The Vallejo Vignettes are reader-submitted stories of something fun, quirky or inspiring that happened to them in Vallejo. If you'd like to submit a Vignette for publication, please email your submission to vallejovignettes@vallejosun.com.

Birding in Vallejo

As a nature nerd, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Vallejo is ospreys. I was first introduced to them on my former commute, which took me to and from Benicia to Petaluma via Mare Island every day. 

While inching my way toward the Highway 37 onramp one morning (as so many of us do!), I heard a loud screech above my car and saw a small tornado of feathers out my window. I looked up and saw an osprey chasing a pair of crows away from a giant pile of sticks that was perched atop a telephone pole. The osprey returned and started preening delicately on an adjacent pole, where I noticed what looked like a small, round security camera. This immediately became my most thrilling commute yet! 

On my way home later that day, I pulled over and took a closer look at everything I had seen that morning. The pile of sticks was clearly an osprey nest, and the camera was pointing directly at it. Someone must be monitoring our local osprey population, I thought. Maybe I should be, too!

I started bringing my camera with me on commute days and began searching the rest of Mare Island for osprey nests. I found quite a few. Once I started paying more attention to the skies and ponds around me, I started seeing ospreys nearly every day. I’ve gotten some great photos, and every Spring I get excited to watch their fledglings grow up and eventually leave their nests. I typically see them hunting along the Napa River and the nearby wetlands or perched on cranes and other shipyard infrastructure. I’m often greeted by their chirps while enjoying a Hydraulic Sandwich at the Mare Island Brewing Co. Coal Sheds, and I cheer audibly when I see them successfully catch a fish.  

Most importantly, the ospreys have opened my eyes to all the other amazing birds that call Vallejo home. We are blessed with an amazing diversity and abundance of birds that many of our neighbors don’t get to enjoy up close. 

My favorite places for birding in Vallejo are Glen Cove, Lake Dalwigk, the White Slough wetlands, Blue Rock Springs, and of course, Mare Island. These are the places I go to get my nature fix. Hope to see you out there!

— By Kyle Gerner

My old farmhouse: How I discovered its story

In 2002, aged 59 and retired from teaching, I decided to sell my Berkeley condo and buy an old Victorian wooden farmhouse in Vallejo. I wanted to use it as an artist residency as well as my home. Vallejo was midway between a close friend in Suisun Valley and my daughter’s family in Albany.  

I wondered about the history of the house. Deeds said it was built in 1910, but I knew it must be older. 

Between 2002-2013, I spent every September-April in rural New Zealand, living in Vallejo each summer. Many artists lived and worked here. They fell in love, as I did, with Vallejo’s climate and friendly people. Every year I also went history-hunting in the registrar’s office in Fairfield.

One puzzle was that my cottage and shed seemed to appear on an 1871 drawing of Vallejo, not where they are now, but just down the hill from where the Good Templar’s Home for Orphans used to be. Could this be “the old Curtis place” I had found mentioned as sold in 1861? Had it been moved? 

Maybe Vallejo High School records could help me. In the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum I searched through school yearbooks. As I turned the pages of the 1938 yearbook, suddenly I found a photo of a tennis team showing a corner of “my” house.

Excitedly, I opened the 1939 yearbook. The house had gone! The next day I visited the VUSD office and asked them if they could help. Yes! They provided copies of deeds showing the school’s purchase of the house, and even a blueprint showing how it was to be moved. 

My next step took me to the library of the California Historical Society on Mission Street in San Francisco. I opened a typescript by artist Mary Curtis Richardson (1848-1931). On the last page I read ‘Father had land a mile or so out of town and built a house.’ 

Story complete! We were living in the Old Curtis Place! 

— by Kay Flavell

Kay’s house has been on the Historic Homes tour of Vallejo the last two years.