Mt Davidson Description
Mt Davidson is the highest hill in San Francisco, and the 40 acre parcel preserved in its park is one of the largest and best of our remnant natural areas. Mt Davidson’s habitat restoration workparties with the Natural Areas Program are official activities of the San Francisco Group of the Sierra Club.
Mt D’s piebald look is due to the different way that Adolph Sutro managed his piece of the hill compared to Leland Stanford. More details here.
The trees on most of Mt D capture vast quantities of fog drip, converting the understory into a rain forest where invasive English ivy, cape ivy, blackberry, and ehrharta grass predominate. Management there involves careful thinning of diseased and failing trees to open up the understory, removal of the overburden of invasive weeds, and planting coastal scrub grasses and forbs and protecting those that arise spontaneously from the remnant seed bank in the soil.
The main issue in the much drier grassland area is invasive annual grasses, though we also battle French broom and radish. Despite the invasive weeds, there is a remarkable collection of native bunchgrasses and many wildflowers still thriving in the grasslands. Here is the management plan.
The juncture between the trees and the grasslands along the north-east corner of Mt D has become one of the most important bird stopovers in the City due to the 13 different species of native berries that grow there. Unfortunately this is exactly the site where the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission planned to trench in a new water main up to the water reservoir at the top of the hill, but fortunately due to volunteer and neighborhood outcries, this plan was shifted to route the pipeline into the noncritical weedy areas under the trees. This work will happen during 2008, and we will be monitoring it closely indeed here at SF Natural Areas.
Mt Davidson currently has 158 volunteers who have subscribed to our regular email newsletters and work at this site. They have posted 82 photos and 32 posts to their blog.
Regular Workparty Schedule
- 1st Saturday of each month from 9:00 to 12:00
Regular Meeting Location
- 36 Bus Turnaround -- [Map and Details]
Additional Information
Blog Posts
Here are blog posts about the Mt Davidson project — presented 2 at a time in reverse chronological order. Browse to earlier or later posts via the pagination controls below.
More Bird Reports
21 June 2008 - 05:54, Tinman said:
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From PaulS, one of Mt D’s most adroit birders:
This morning at Mt. D. I observed 4 juv. WESTERN BLUEBIRDS from 7:30-7:40. The bluebirds, in spotted juv. plumage, first appeared near the utility box at the summit clearing and then proceeded to move around between eucalyptus trees and shrubs in the area of the upper Ravine. They occasionally called while perched. At 7:40, the group took off, circled once, then flew off to the west above the euc forest. This occurrence is unprecedented for the season and location. The 3 prior records of W. Bluebird at Mt. D. involved fly-overs in the late September/October time period (9/01, 10/02, 9/07). While this group of 4 may have recently fledged in the Presidio (assuming nesting has occurred there this year), I’m guessing they were post-nesting dispersers from south or east of SF.
Other observations of local interest:
- Olive-sided Flycatcher 2
- Pac.-slope Flycatcher 1 (called a few times in the “Bowl”)
- Steller’s Jay 1
- Br.-head. Cowbird 1 m., 1 f. (a few show up at Mt. D. around this time very year)
- Lesser Goldfinch 10+
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June 2008 - Blackberry!
11 June 2008 - 09:24, Tinman said:
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The determined group of volunteers attacked primarily blackberry on The Ledge this month. This takes bravery and persistence, as the blackberry canes are equipped with thorns that will put your eye out or at least rip up your palms, arms, neck, and anything else they can reach.
Nonetheless, blackberry (Rubus discolor) is one of Mt D’s most acute invasive weed problems, so attack it we must. Left alone, a blackberry plant produces numerous canes from its central root crown—up to 525 canes per square meter in fact. The root crown can grow to eight inches in diameter and must be removed in order to take out the plant. (See more details here.)
Here is what one sees when staring into the heart of a thicket:
And here is what a root crown looks like when extracted:
This one didn’t set any records, but you can see how extracting it required a fair bit of effort.
We’re gradually pushing back the blackberry infestation from “good” areas such as The Ledge, the ridge that runs from the Mt D summit to the northwest. Along this ridge is an impressive Pacific reed grass community full of other native plant co-travelers. As we extend this managed area into the neglected areas, you can see a clear demarcation of Good vs Evil:
The work is painstaking because it must be done by hand in order not to cause more problems than we solve. Still, anyone walking through Adolph Sutro’s tree plantation on Mt D can see how much progress our efforts have produced.
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