In the delta, with a few paddle strokes in a kayak across the cuts and sloughs of a wetlands marsh, it can feel like you’ve traveled through a wormhole in the universe and emerged out the other side.

One of my favorite activities is watching a marsh wake up with the dawn. The curlews and ibis streak by just above the surface. Geese fly by in giant V wedges. The swarms of blackbirds can rise and fall as if connected. The occasional pintail and other ducks, which often arrive overhead in a pirouette, and then set their wings, dive and land.

California has lost more than 90 percent of its wetlands, it has long been documented, most to the conversion to farmland in the Central Valley and diked-off levees and water diversions.

A series of programs is under way to restore wetlands, the newest starting this week. The Department of Water Resources will break ground Wednesday at Dutch Slough in Oakley for what DWR calls its largest tidal wetlands restoration project — nearly 1,200 acres — in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Other projects by other agencies are transforming salt ponds to wetlands in the Napa-Sonoma Marsh and along South San Francisco Bay.

Marsh wetlands are nature’s freshwater filters. They provide flood control and buffer zones to take the starch out of big storms. And they are nursery areas and habitat for fish and wildlife.

The Bay Area has 20 major wetlands that provide destinations for more than 1 million shorebirds in winter. In the Suisun Marsh, the Department of Fish and Wildlife has verified more than 220 bird species — that includes 25 waterfowl species and nine species of raptors including bald eagles and peregrine falcons — and 21 wildlife species that range from mink to the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.

The new project on the delta will convert fallow agricultural land into tidal marshes over the next three years, said Allen Young at DWR. It will be developed into a regional park that will “thrust visitors backward in time, into a vibrant ecological wetland reminiscent of the delta of the early 1800s,” he said.

The project is part of a plan to restore more than 30,000 acres of critical wildlife habitat in the delta in the next two years or so. Dutch Slough, a site with three parcels near Oakley on the western edge of the delta, was selected as the starting point, Young said.

When ready, likely by 2021, DWR will breach the levees and allow water from the delta to flow in and out with the daily tides. “Ultimately, the project will reestablish a tidal marsh, creating a rich habitat for fish and wildlife,” Young said.

Outdoor notes Wolves in the night: A report of wolves in remote Siskiyou County was confirmed last week when my son, Jeremy Keyston, a wildlife expert and Pacific Coast Trail hiker, said he heard them calling in the night near his campsite. “I heard the stories, then I heard them last night,” he reported the morning after the encounter. The event took place at camp at Kangaroo Lake in Klamath National Forest, about 20 miles from the nearest town, Callahan (population 152). With GPS collars, the Department of Fish and Wildlife has verified wolves dispersing in the north state, with some individuals traveling 6-10 miles per day and distances of between 450 and 750 miles. In addition, a breeding female in the Lassen pack gave birth to pups in April, the DFW reported. Not all the wolves are collared, of course, and exact counts are impossible to determine, says the DFW, which asks the public to report details of wolf encounters through a form on its website at https://www.wildlife.ca.gov. Butterfly carpet: Along I nterstate 80 near El Sobrante last week, William Marion reported seeing a mass of butterflies that spanned roughly 3 miles. “I stopped at a store just off the highway, and saw that they were orange and black with the black as trim around the wing edges,” he wrote. “I have family who live less than a block from the monarchs in Grover Beach, but they (monarchs) seemed bigger and more transparent. My wife is obsessed now, and insisted on capturing one for ‘interrogation.’ I didn’t like her tone. Help.” Tom says: These are likely California tortoiseshell butterflies, which occasionally have outbreaks with unbelievable swarms, and to see such a swarm is often a once-in-a-lifetime event. The mind as a camera: “I was camping at Big Springs in the Eastern Sierra and had the most incredible experience: It was midafternoon and there seemed to be no one else in the campground. I was sitting there reading. I had no cell phone and my camera was not in my chair. Something made me look behind and there was the most beautiful wolf. It was such an incredible experience. I had no thought of fear. “He actually stood there and let me talk to him and then scampered off. It‘s a picture in my mind that will remain with me. Definitely one of the highlights of my many years of camping in the Sierra.” — Ann Tingley The natural bypass: “A recent piece about a hiker at Tahoe referred to ‘auxiliary arterial flow.’ Neither a Google search nor several medical databases listed it. Is it possible to contact your doctor to ask him or her what the appropriate term is? It’s important to me.” — Martin Lindauer Tom says: The doc says the accepted medical term is “collateral flow,” and that he sometimes uses the phrase “auxiliary arterial flow” as a more visual way to get the point across to patients: Aerobic activity, like hiking or biking, throughout life, can cause your heart to grow hundreds of tiny arteries that help carry blood and pump oxygen through your system, what he called “the natural bypass.” — Tom Stienstra Bay Area wetlands San Francisco: Candlestick Point, Crissy Field Marin: Abbotts Lagoon, Big Lagoon, Bolinas Lagoon, Bothin Marsh, Corte Madera Ecological Reserve, Drakes Estero, Five Brooks Pond, Giacomini Wetlands, Jakes Island, Napa-Sonoma Marsh, Novato Marsh, Petaluma Marsh, Richardson Bay and Rodeo Lagoon Peninsula: Coyote Point, Foster City Lagoons, Palo Alto Baylands, Redwood Creek estuary, Redwood City Harbor, Ravenswood Open Space, Pescadero Marsh, Pillar Point Harbor and San Gregorio Lagoon Contra Costa County: Bethel Island, Big Break, Frank’s Tract, Point Pinole, Martinez Regional Shoreline, Miller-Knox and Point Isabel Alameda County: Bockman Channel, Cogswell Marsh, Crown Memorial, Don Edwards S.F. Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Eden Landing, Hayward Regional Shoreline, Martin Luther King, Oro Loma Marsh and San Lorenzo Creek South Bay: Coyote Creek Estuary, San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Shoreline Regional Park, Sunnyvale Baylands

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In addition to providing marsh habitat for birds, Young said the restored marsh will provide a nursery area for juvenile fish and help protect them from predators. “Young salmon will be able to hide from predators in the marsh,” he said. “The tidal marsh will provide rearing habitat where the young salmon can grow.”

Tom Stienstra is The Chronicle’s outdoors writer. Email: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @StienstraTom