On a quiet morning, a great blue heron hunted on the lawn at Berkeley's Shorebird Park.

Shorebird Park

Across from the Berkeley Marina, Berkeley's Shorebird Park shares the Bay shore with Adventure Playground and popular low-cost facilities for motor-free water sports. The park is heavily used by families and houses nature-study programs and summer and holiday camps for children. By the early 2000s, dense thickets of French broom had walled off the waterfront and made the "naturẹ study area" an invasive monoculture.

Beginning in 2007, Friends of Five Creeks' volunteers from elementary-school-age up, pus our Weekday Weed Warriors, levered out the 400' wall of French broom, planting tough natives include mugwort, California sage, and lizard tail, joining the native creeping wildrye already edging the beach. Elsewhere in and near the park, we also removed other broom thickets and dense stands of thistle, ice plant, and other problem weeds. Only light maintenance is needed now. Unfortunately, many of the natives that welcomed wildlife, especially pollinators, have been destroyed by mowing.

See a one-minute slide show of our work in Shorebird Park.

Directions

Shorebird Park, 160 University Avenue, is largely hidden from the street.

By car, you can park at Cal Sailing parking lot east of adjacent Adventure Playground and walk west along the water into the park. You can park in the Berkeley Marina parking lot and cross University south into the park. Or at the end of University, turn left on Seawall Drive and left again into Hs Lordship's parking lot. Walk northeast into the park.

By AC Transit, take 51B buses that go to the Marina (check schedule and ask the driver). Get off at the last or next-to-last stops.

By bicycle, take the pedestrian-bicycle bridge or the Bay Trail and then the Bay Trail extension on the south side of University Avenue.

OpenStreetMap's map of trails in this area is here.