While in San Francisco, in December of 2019, Cory and I decided we would take the ferry from Fisherman's Wharf over to Alcatraz Island. Alcatraz Island is most famous for being a notorious penitentiary for some of America's most infamous criminals. Many movies have been made about the Rock and the famous inmates it once held, including Chicago Mafia boss Al Capone. Cory was interested to learn that Alcatraz had been a U.S. Army Fort, utilized for coastal defense and to protect the entrance into San Francisco Bay, beginning around 1850. Even less well known, is the period when the Island was briefly occupied by Native American activists in 1969. This occupation and attempted "reclaiming" of the island by Native American activists was an interesting bit of history and culture which Cory and I was previously unaware of.
To be honest, I wasn't really impressed with Alcatraz as a "Historic Landmark." It is largely a decaying structure with few interesting architectural features. They didn't even have anyone reenacting life on Alcatraz when it was a military fort or as an inmate in the cells, which would have added some interesting context to cell bars and bland white washed walls.
Apart from human activity, Cory and I were surprised to learn that since the close of the penitentiary, Mother Nature has slowly began to reclaim Alcatraz for herself. Alcatraz is part of the national park system now, which has regular ferries to the island, to give tourists a sense of what incarceration on the Rock would be like. The National Park system has recognized though, that as the island is unused, apart from tourism, it is an obvious place that wildlife might inhabit and where vegetation might begin to take root. Now for the National Park system it is a balancing act between preserving the prison structure as testaments to human activity on the island and allowing nature to run its course and increase biodiversity in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I have since learned that Alcatraz Island was originally named Alcatraces by Spanish explorers in 1775. Alcatraces, means strange birds, suggesting that Alcatraz had been a natural place for bird/seabird colonies. Since the close of the penitentiary, wildlife has slowly come back to the island. Depending on the time of year, tourists may glimpse varied types of seabirds including, Gull colonies, Cormorant Colonies, and Snowy Egret colonies; other wildlife on the island include deer mice, ground squirrels, Harbor Seals, Sea Lions and Peregrine Falcons.
As Cory and I walked around the Island to the southwest of the inmate recreation yard and the prisoner gardens, we spotted this Peregrine Falcon scanning the horizon, the ground and stretching its wings in the breeze. I was pretty excited, this was the first time I had ever seen a Peregrine Falcon in the wild. We stayed there for a little while and waited for it to do something extremely interesting, sadly it didn't. It was a chilly, drizzly, dreary day on Alcatraz in December, so after about 20 minutes, Cory and I decided to move on. While, it wasn't the shot I really wanted of this Falcon, it was still pretty cool to see this master hunter in the wild for the first time. Seeing this falcon, some of the harbor seals and several other bird species dotted around the island really did showcase how nature could reclaim an area even after so much human activity and construction. Small glimpses of hope for the earth.
#Wildlife #PeregrineFalcon #Photography #Alcatraz #AlcatrazPrison #SanFrancisco #California #Nature #Falcon
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