Helping Birds in a Changing Bay Area

By JD Bergeron, CEO, International Bird Rescue

This is a shortened/modified version of a blog originally posted by our partner organization International Bird Rescue.

Many of us at International Bird Rescue started out as birders, on a shoreline trail with binoculars, falling in love with the birds of San Francisco Bay. Bird Rescue treats birds that are sick, injured, orphaned, or contaminated, and gives them a second chance at life in the wild.

Our organization was founded here in 1971 by people who could not stand on the sidelines. When an oil spill in the Bay left birds stranded, volunteers went to the shoreline with no playbook for saving them, and they began writing one. Golden Gate Bird Alliance has a similar founding story. Fifty-five years later, we are still people who take action, and our work still begins the moment a bird can no longer care for itself.

In 2015, when a “mystery goo” coated hundreds of seabirds along the East Bay shoreline, we developed a new treatment to clean them safely. When crews dismantled the old Bay Bridge span, biologists brought us displaced cormorant eggs and chicks to raise and release. In 2019, when a nesting tree collapsed outside the downtown Oakland post office, we rescued nearly 90 chicks and eggs of herons and egrets.

Changing ocean conditions, including this year’s El Niño, are driving repeated starvation events, and Brown Pelicans and Common Murres now arrive at our Fairfield wildlife center year after year. As starving seabirds fill our centers, we need our local community more than ever.

Your skills as birders make you valuable partners in this work. If a wild bird lets you get too close or seems out of place, call our Bird HelpLine at 866-SOS-BIRD. If you spot a leg band, report it because we learn from resightings. To the many Golden Gate Bird Alliance members who already volunteer and give with us, thank you. To those of you who take action in your own communities, like the GGBA effort to reduce fishing line injuries at Lake Temescal, we applaud you. If you are new to Bird Rescue, discover how we’re making a difference in the Bay Area and taking action for birds in a changing world here in our latest blog here.