It’s one of the few places in the Bay Area where nature remains relatively untouched, allowing for this swampy patch of land to remain a local secret.
It had been months since anyone stepped foot on Aramburu Island, just off the town of Strawberry in Richardson Bay, and it was, well, trashed.
Marin County took ownership of the manmade island in 1999 and handed over management to Marin County Parks and the Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary, but the real owners may be the region’s birds, who use the space as a nesting ground and refuge. It’s one of the few places in the Bay Area where nature remains relatively untouched, allowing for this swampy patch of land to remain a Bay Area secret.The town of Strawberry in Marin County was mostly dairy farms until the 1940s.
Cut off from the mainland, it mostly sat undisturbed for decades, left to erode and eventually shrinking from its original size by almost half. Meanwhile, it was overtaken by nonnative plant species like acacia and ice plant, a deterrent for area wildlife. But a disastrous day in 2007 changed the island’s fate forever, and was ultimately the catalyst for its rebirth.On Nov.
And the birds did come back, most notably the black oystercatcher, which is only seen nesting in four other places in the Bay Area. Killdeer, black-necked stilts, white-tailed kites, willets, long-billed curlews and marbled godwits are all also regularly seen on the island, in addition to migratory birds that pass through and the Canada geese that strut around regularly.Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE