Hummingbirds: Anna’s and Allen’s
Anna’s hummingbirds (Calypte anna) are year-round residents of northern California, but they weren’t always. Prior to the mid-20th century, northern Baja Cali...
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Restoring Native Plants Helps Ocean Birds
Brandt’s cormorants (Phalacrocorax penicillatus) are back on the sea cliff just west of Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz. They started using this ledge in...
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A Natural History Field Guide to Santa Cruz’s Pogonip
The Pogonip is a beautiful city greenbelt located in Santa Cruz, California, on the eastern edge of the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) campus. It contains a v...
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UCSC’s Glass Gardens in the Sky
The tops of UCSC’s science buildings have three high-tech greenhouses that make them a botanist’s paradise in the sky. All three facilities are computer-controlled...
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School Street Stairs: A Step Back in Time
Until 1920, the Upper and Lower Plazas of Mission Hill in Santa Cruz, California were both the town center and a popular neighborhood. Schools, businesses, and hotels wer...
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Lesser-Known Stories of the Long Marine Lab Neighborhood
Lots of great things happen at Long Marine Laboratory, including marine research, marine education, and lagoon and bluff habitat restoration. The lab sits atop a beautifu...
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Mitchell Cove: Erosion of a Sea Stack
Mitchell Cove beach, along West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, California, has lost its stack. Its iconic rock tower, or sea stack to be more precise, is now merely a rock as...
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Celebrate Qing Ming at Evergreen Cemetery
The Qing Ming Festival is a Chinese ceremony that dates back to the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, around 618 AD. Qing Ming translates to “pure brightness.” Its pur...
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Community Volunteers Help Native Plants Thrive Again
Ancient peoples might have managed the landscape around Santa Cruz, California through fire, but we can also see current small-scale land management practices along Pilki...
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Trash Middens: From Shells to Plastic
What will people hundreds of years from now think of American culture when they rummage through our trash? Especially in the absence of written records, a culture’s trash...
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