
This is one of eight embroidered patches created for the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex via the San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society. These patches are awarded to volunteers as they complete a set number of work hours at each Refuge, and are sold at the Visitor’s Center to help raise money to support volunteer efforts.
Each patch represents key species found in one of the seven Refuges, with an additional patch representing the complex as a whole. I worked closely with Refuge biologists to ensure each species was rendered faithfully within the 10-color limit imposed by the embroidery process.
In the patch representing Salinas River National Wildlife Refuge, an endangered western snowy plover (Charadrius alexandrinus) poses in the foreground while a Smith’s blue butterfly (Euphilotes enoptes smithi) floats above.
This 367-acre coastal National Wildlife Refuge encompasses coastal dunes and beach, grasslands, a saline pond and salt marsh , and riparian habitats. Located within the Pacific Flyway, the refuge is used by a variety of migratory birds during breeding, wintering, and migration periods, and also provides habitat for several threatened and endangered species. The threatened western snowy plover, just six inches tall, lays its eggs in simple scrapes on the sparsely vegetated foredunes of the refuge, as well as other beaches and salt pannes in California, and the endangered Smith’s blue butterfly makes its home in the buckwheat patches found blooming throughout the backdunes.