The Coyote Lagoon Trail is tucked behind an industrial park in Fremont at the southeastern end of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. This short 2.18 mile graveled trail with no elevation change in Fremont was created in the 1980s as part of a restoration of 260 acres of marshland by the SF Bay Conservation and Development Commission. It’s an easy and flat walk that, out and back is a little over 4 miles in total.
As with all trails along the SF Bay, there is no shade. I recommend putting on sunscreen and wearing a hat and glasses (if your eye’s a sensitive to bright sunlight) for the walk. No dogs are allowed in the wildlife refuge.
Parking for Coyote Lagoon Trail
The trail is bookended by small parking lots. Both the south and north parking lots for the Coyote Lagoon trailheads are located off Fremont Blvd. Neither of the small parking lots are marked by signs so be on the lookout for them next to industrial parkings lots to make sure you enter the right driveway.
The south parking lot (Google Maps, 37.464126, -121.930836) is just south of Lakeview Blvd. with an entrance on the west side of Fremont Blvd. The north parking lot features mature weeping willow trees, a lawn, and a picnic table. The parking lot is set back along an unmarked entrance at the back of Landing Rd (Google Maps, 37.480360, -121.948464).
Walking the Coyote Lagoon Trail
The north trailhead for Coyote Lagoon trail is accessed from the parking lot by walking a short distance back on the paved road. The beginning of the trail guides you along marshland on one side and the business park on the other.
As the name implies, this trail takes you along the eastern end of the lagoon area of Coyote Creek. The lagoon is a marshy area that tributaries of the Coyote Creek flows through.
Birding along the Coyote Lagoon Trail
American avocets and pods of American white pelicans are common visitors to the mudflats of the Coyote Lagoon area. Close up views of the lagoon aren’t possible from the trail so bring a pair of binoculars if you want to bird here.
The marsh areas that line the lagoon are noisy with calls from year-round residents: song sparrows, marsh wrens, and black phoebes. White-crowned sparrows, a winter resident, can also be seen calling and flitting around the marsh vegetation.
The other side of the trail is a 40-acre wetlands retention basin. Coyote Lagoon Trail passes close to the banks of this basin so it’s a lot easier to see the different shorebirds and waterbirds that congregate here.
At this time of year, the retention basin is well-populated with various species of ducks, double-crested cormorants, long-billed dowitchers, American coots, killdeer, greater yellowlegs, and other small shorebirds.
West Lagoon Trail
There is a secondary trail, called the West Lagoon Trail that splits off to the right as you are walking from the north trailhead. This is a very short trail, less than one mile out and back, that takes you between the western side of Coyote Lagoon and Mud Slough.
The West Lagoon Trail takes you over a rusty metal bridge with some very warped and decayed wooden planks. Walk in the middle of this bridge to avoid the suspect condition of the wooden planks along the edge.
This side of the lagoon is quieter than the jogging path of Coyote Lagoon Trail. There are no large flocks of ducks, coots, or other waterbirds in the waters. Great and snowy egrets have evenly spaced themselves out, tucked by the reeds along the banks of the slough.
A Virginia rail can be heard calling from the depths of the marsh. A northern harrier flies over mud slough, hunting for a meal.
Walking further along West Lagoon Trail, a rather suspect and rickety looking boardwalk beckons the more adventurous. As there are no signs saying the boardwalk is closed, I decided to take my chances on this elevated walkway over the marsh that leads to a broken viewing platform over one of the mud flats.
The lookout point over the mudflat is broken and unusable. Not much bird life can be seen in this section anyway, so I made my way over the elevated boardwalk back onto West Lagoon Trail. The section of the West Lagoon Trail ends up looping back onto itself via some narrow pig trails around the transmission towers in the area.
Overall, walking the entire trail system at Coyote Lagoon is fairly quick. Even with multiple stops for birding, the entire Coyote Lagoon and West Lagoon trail walk took about two hours.
