Soar virtually over Hawk Hill, Rodeo Lagoon and Point Bonita Lighthouse at the magical Marin Headlands with Ranger Cordelia Vargas and special guest Carmen DeLeon, a volunteer leader from the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory.

Park Postcards Podcast Episode Seven Marin Headlands TRANSCRIPT Welcome and General description - Ranger Mariajose Alcantara: Happy 2021 everyone! This is Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s Park Postcards Podcast! This is a podcast where each episode introduces you to what makes each park site unique, through the voice of community members who have visited, and our park rangers and staff partners who work there. We aim to highlight the work we do to connect our local community groups to the special places in our park, and share what these places and experiences mean to them. The beauty of our outreach work is collaborating with diverse community members and newcomers to introduce them and welcome them to their National Parks. We hope that through listening to these “audio postcards”, you get excited to visit Golden Gate National Recreation Area in a healthy and safe future! Introduction to Podcast - Ranger Mariajose Alcantara: You’re tuned in to episode seven featuring two guests who absolutely love the Marin Headlands as much as I do. This is your friend and host, Ranger Mariajose. The Marin Headlands is the most magical place of the GGNRA, at least in my opinion as a former Headlands ranger. From 2008 through 2018, I had the privilege to live in the historic military barracks at Fort Cronkhite and Fort Barry, where I woke up to the chuckles of quails and elephant seals, and fell asleep to relaxing foghorns as I saw the shadows of deer pass my windows. I’ll never forget the evenings spent hiking the hills at sunset and making friends with a skunk who would walk me home from the visitor center. I am thrilled to introduce our guest Carmen DeLeon, who will share her audio postcard from the Headlands. She’s an environmental educator, born and raised in San Francisco. She studied wildlife biology at UC Davis and natural resources at the University of Idaho before flying back to the bay as fast as possible! She has worked both for the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory and Nature Bridge- one of our park partners. Carmen got to know the Headlands landscape through work and daily life, also as a resident in the historic housing. She is currently a volunteer leader at the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory where she has supported the science of protecting migratory raptors since 2008. Let’s hear her story:

Special Guest from Golden Gate National Raptor Observatory – Carmen DeLeon’s Postcard: Hey there, it's Carmen and I'm coming to you from Hawk Hill in the Marin headlands. Whenever I set foot in the headlands, I'm transported to my favorite memory of hawk hill where I get to spend time as a volunteer bird bander and docent. come along with me for a day on Hawk Hill as we remember the very first bird I was able to band with the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory. I was a brand new intern on my first real adventure working in the world of wildlife biology. It’s the month of August affectionately called “Fogust” by a lot of us volunteers, and we drive up the windy road toward our field site gazing at the rolling Bay waves below and watching for birds along the signposts. we climbed the trail to Hawk Hill with the gravel crunching beneath our feet and nimbly avoiding the Lupine plants to approach the bird blind. The bird blind is kind of like a hideaway where we can sit to avoid disturbing the landscape and wildlife when we do our work to monitor the migrating Raptors. my teammates and I cheer and give each other high fives as we see the blue sky break through the fog and feel the northwest wind. We eagerly watch the sky. Suddenly! an American Kestrel the smallest falcon in North America, flies into one of the vertical threadlike nets at the field site. I quickly darted outside and gently scoop her up protecting her folded wings and lightly placing my fingers around her yellow legs. Though I work fast to keep her calm and safe, the world stops for a moment as I notice how perfectly each tiny feather lays across her face. The darkness of her eyes is striking we bring the kestrel into the cool dark space of the bird blinds, measure her, and use special pliers to apply a metal anklet- the bird band. It has a unique number to help us track her movements over hopefully long and healthy life. After we collect the measurement data, it's important to return our banded birds to their migration quickly so they have time to find food to continue their journey and shelter to rest each night. Our encounter lasts just 15 minutes before our Kestrel is back on her way hovering along the hillsides in search of tasty dragon flies. Even though I can't bring everyone with me on a field day bird banding, I think you should definitely check out the view from a hike to Hawk Hill. There's always something new to notice any time of year from whales spy hopping, to resident Ravens preening their shiny feathers. Be sure to bring binoculars, and wear lots of layers, the weather here can change suddenly from sunny and warm to fog so thick that you feel like you're on a rocky island with only the bellowing foghorns to remind you that there is water below. Hawk Hill is a place where I come to reflect and to refresh as I think about the dynamics of migration, movement as natural as the rhythm of our breath, for both people and wildlife. It's such an honor to know that my appreciation for this place and raptors also contributes to important work for conservation. I hope that you can enjoy it too as we all embrace nature and the outdoors in our own unique ways.

Transition to Ranger Cordelia - Ranger Mariajose” I feel like I was right there with you Carmen! Thanks for inviting us into your vivid memories of the Headlands! Now let’s hear from our ranger friend and my colleague Cordelia Vargas who has been working in the Marin Headlands since May of 2019. Cordelia has a Bachelor's in Environmental Studies, and minor in Feminist Studies from UC Santa Barbara. She’s super passionate about social justice and has researched indigenous Miwok history, women of the Nike Missile Site, and Marincello- the housing project that never came to be in the headlands. Ranger Cordelia recently coordinated social science surveys throughout the Headlands to assess visitor interactions and safety throughout the pandemic. Since the Headlands is a bird haven, of course Cordelia is also a bird lover who enjoys the outdoors and has inspired hundreds of visitors to also fall in love with her park site. Let’s hear some of her interpretation and what she loves best about working as a Ranger in the Marin Headlands.

Ranger Cordelia Vargas’ Postcard and Marin Headlands Interpretation: Hello, my name is Cordelia Vargas, and I am a Park Ranger in the Marin Headlands, which is on the ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok. Why do I love working in the Marin Headlands? I’ve actually had a pretty hard time answering this question because there are so many things I love about this place. For one, I am kind of a bird nerd and the Marin Headlands has so many birds to enjoy. We have the raptor migration here in the fall, but really any time of year you’re going to see tons of turkey vultures, hawks, and harriers all soaring over the headland hills. There are a bunch of different wading birds and sea birds that frequent the Rodeo Lagoon, like the Great egret and double crested cormorants. There are peregrine falcons that nest by the Point Bonita Lighthouse, and if you are lucky you might see a great horned owl if you visit here at night! You could truly do a tour of the headlands revolving around birds. A couple of months ago actually, I was hiking by Rodeo Lagoon, and as I approached, I could hear this loud splashing in the distance. It almost sounded like rain and I was confused because it was sunny. I thought, “What on earth is that?” and as I got past the tall fennel blocking my view, I could see down into the lagoon where there was a massive flock of brown pelicans. They were just flapping away, splashing in the water, fishing, preening, and enjoying the lagoon. It brings me so much joy to see all these amazing creatures right in my office, so to speak. Ultimately though, I’d say my favorite aspect about working here is that I get to share what I know and love about the Marin Headlands with visitors. Whether it be sharing the history of all of our military batteries from World Wars I and II, peering through a visitor’s binoculars and helping them identify a bird they’ve never seen before, or sharing the story of how community activism stopped the Marin Headlands from becoming housing and helped it become a national park in 1972. Among my favorite aspects of this job has been leading tours down to the Point Bonita Lighthouse. I love to surprise people with the fact that where the lighthouse stands today is not where it was originally built in 1855. It was originally built high up on a cliff hundreds of feet above the water, close to where the radar tower is today. But this lighthouse was only the 4th one built on the west coast of the United States, so there were environmental conditions they didn’t quite take into consideration, and by that I mean the dense fog we have here! It rendered the lighthouse basically useless in its original location. So in 1877, the lighthouse was moved to where it stands today at the very point of Point Bonita, but to do that required the building of a tunnel through unforgiving basalt rock, rock that formed 300 million years ago from volcanoes erupting and cooling underwater. The tunnel that we can walk through easily in a matter of moments to reach the lighthouse today, took Chinese-American railroad workers 4 months of carving by hand to make that trip possible. The history of our lighthouse is a rich one, and reflecting on how this light has been a guide to ships, allows us to examine how we can be guiding lights to the people in our lives. Now I am a little biased, but I believe that anytime to visit the Marin Headlands is the best time. If you visit on a foggy day, the moisture in the air captures the earthy perfume of the coastal sagebrush flora here and its pretty remarkable. But if you want to catch the iconic views we have of the golden gate bridge, you’re going to have a better chance seeing those views unobstructed by fog if you visit during the spring and fall months. Karl the fog tends to ease up around those times of year, but there are of course no guarantees. As our sites re-open, like the Point Bonita Lighthouse, they’ll only be open on specific days and times so be sure to check on our official national park service website for the most up to date information. Getting outdoors and enjoying nature can be so beneficial for one’s physical and mental health, and to do this while we face COVID-19, please wear a mask out on the trails when you cannot social distance from others. Consider visiting earlier in the day, or to less frequented areas to avoid the crowds. I also recommend bringing layers anytime you visit. It could be sunny and warm everywhere else in the San Francisco Bay, and it could still be cold and foggy in the headlands. I hope that giving this a listen sparked your curiosity about this fascinating and beautiful place, and I invite you to come give us a visit! We hope to see you safely and soon.

Conclusion - Ranger Mariajose: Thank you Ranger Cordelia for the valuable tips on visiting the magical Headlands, and for sharing some of its history with us! I’ll keep and ear and eye out for splashing pelicans on my next visit too!

And I want to thank you podcast friends for tuning in! We are happy to have explored the Marin Headlands with you on this episode, and we hope you will join us again on future episodes that will feature other park sites around the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Stay tuned for episode eight! We’ll feature Lands End and we’ll hear from our park partner Yakuta Poonawalla from the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and former park intern Jainita Patel, who have shared both of their Park Postcard. We can’t wait for you to hear it! Until then, recreate responsibly in your National Parks! Listen to all of our episodes online at nps.gov/podcasts/parkpostcardspodcast.htm and find them also on Apple Podcasts. Take Care!