Excerpt:

It is a windy, wet day in mid-April when Friends of Alameda Wildlife Refuge’s last volunteer work party of the season passes through the gates to the former airfields at the Alameda Naval Air Station. Across the bay San Francisco is a foggy mirage and the site is flat, barren, and closed to the public…perfect for the endangered California Least Terns that like to nest on sparsely vegetated gravel near water. Soon the birds will arrive from southern latitudes and prepare to nest. It will be September when next the work party visits here. Today, they prepare a grid to help Fish and Wildlife monitor the colony during nesting season, set up hundreds of shelters for Least Tern chicks, and scatter oyster shells across the fenced-in 9.6 acre site.