Drive three and a half miles north on Highway 1, past the turnoff for Seadrift, and the sign marking the entrance to the preserve above Bolinas Lagoon reads differently than it did a year ago. Audubon Canyon Ranch, the organization that has stewarded that hillside since 1962, renamed itself last September. It now goes by All Hands Ecology.

A name that sat on that sign for 63 years doesn't change quietly, and yet this one nearly did. Worth understanding why, because the reasoning clears up a mix-up that's followed the place for decades, and because it's a good reason to sort out what's actually worth watching for out there this fall, now that the birds most people assume still nest there haven't been back since 2013.

The Confusion Baked Into the Old Name

The organization was never part of the National Audubon Society. It was founded by Marty Griffin, then president of the Marin chapter of Audubon, along with Aileen Pierson, Stan Picher, and a handful of volunteers who bought the land to stop a marina and hotel development on Bolinas Lagoon. The name stuck, and so did the assumption that came with it. CEO Tom Gardali, who has led the organization since 2021, has said the old name caused near-daily confusion, with visitors and donors alike believing it was either a chapter of the national Audubon Society or a single fenced preserve rather than the 5,000 acres across 26 properties in Marin and Sonoma Counties it actually stewards.

The other piece is the name itself. John James Audubon, for whom the National Audubon Society and dozens of local chapters are named, enslaved people, and a wave of Audubon-affiliated groups around the Bay Area, including chapters in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties, have dropped the name in favor of "Bird Alliance." All Hands Ecology's board ran its own search, scoring more than 70 candidate names before landing on one meant to describe the organization rather than borrow someone else's. Gardali put it simply: "the root of 'ecology' is home."

The Birds You Won't See

Here's the part that actually changes how a resident should think about the preserve. For decades, the pitch for visiting was the heronry in Picher Canyon, where as many as 175 breeding pairs of great blue herons and great egrets nested in the redwoods above the lagoon. That colony hasn't been used since 2013. The organization's own current explanation points to bald eagle predation as the likely cause, though no one can say for certain why the birds left. The canyon was closed to the public for a stretch afterward in hopes the birds would return. They didn't.

That's a meaningful correction if you've been telling out-of-town guests to time a visit around egret season, or if you've assumed the preserve still runs the same weekend nesting-season schedule it did years ago. It doesn't. Access now happens through scheduled public days and school hiking groups in spring and fall rather than a standing Saturday-Sunday season, so anyone heading up expecting to just show up should check the calendar first.

What's Actually Worth Looking For This Fall

The good news is that the reason to slow down on that stretch of Highway 1 hasn't disappeared, it's just moved. Bolinas Lagoon remains a working stop on the Pacific Flyway, and fall is when the shorebird migration comes through the mudflats in real numbers. Low tide is when to look, since that's when birds concentrate to feed along the exposed flats rather than scattering across open water.

The harbor seals are the more reliable daily sighting. They haul out on Pickleweed and Kent islands and on the lagoon's sandbars, a near-daily habit rather than a seasonal one, and several pullouts along Highway 1 give a clear view without needing to enter the preserve at all. The county's own guidance for the adjacent Bolinas Lagoon Preserve asks visitors to keep a 300-foot distance and keep dogs leashed, which matters more this time of year as pupping season winds down and the seals that remain are settling into their fall routine.

A Bigger Map Than the Lagoon

Part of what the rebrand acknowledges is that the organization's work has outgrown Bolinas Lagoon entirely. Its holdings now include Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen, Cypress Grove Preserve in Marshall on Tomales Bay, and Modini Preserve near Healdsburg. Its research has expanded well past birds too. Living with Lions, its mountain lion study, tracks how the animals are faring across Sonoma, Napa, and Marin, and its fire ecology team runs prescribed burns and grassland restoration work, the kind of good fire meant to reduce the risk of the destructive kind. It's the same organization that's always been headquartered on that hillside above the lagoon. It just does more now, and the new name is meant to say so plainly rather than assume anyone already knows.

Why the Sign Still Matters

None of this changes the drive north out of town, the fog that sits on the ridge some mornings and burns off by noon somewhere past Bolinas, or the reason most people slow down at those pullouts in the first place. What's changed is what you're actually looking at when you do. The heronry that made the place famous is gone for now, the organization that runs it has a new name and a wider job, and the seals hauling out on the sandbars this month are, if anything, a better bet for a sighting than birds that packed up more than a decade ago.

Stinson Beach has always been a town where the landscape does most of the talking. It's worth knowing, next time you pass that sign, what's actually changed and what hasn't.

Scott Woods has spent years getting to know the towns north of the Golden Gate, Stinson Beach included, well enough to notice small changes like this one. If you're thinking about property in Stinson Beach or anywhere else along the Marin coast, Scott Woods is worth a conversation.