By Ilana DeBare
This Monday September 1st will mark the 100th anniversary of the death in captivity of the last Passenger Pigeon.
Several months ago, I read Richard Rhodes’ fascinating biography of John James Audubon and was struck by Audubon’s description of the arrival and slaughter of a massive Passenger Pigeon flock in the midwest around 1816:

“The noise which they made, though yet distant, reminded me of a hard gale at sea…. As the birds arrived and passed over me, I felt a current of air that surprised me. Thousands were soon knocked down by the pole-men. The birds continued to pour in…. The Pigeons, arriving by thousands, alighted everywhere, one above another, until solid masses as large as hogsheads were formed on the branches all around. Here and there the perches gave way under the weight with a crash, and, falling to the ground, destroyed hundreds of the birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every stick was loaded. It was a scene of uproar and confusion. I found it quite useless to speak, or even to shout to those persons who were nearest to me. Even the reports of the guns were seldom heard, and I was made aware of the firing only by seeing the shooters reloading….
The Pigeons were constantly coming, and it was past midnight before I perceived a decrease in the number of those that arrived. The uproar continued the whole night…. Towards the approach of the day, the noise in some measure [having] subsided, long before objects were distinguishable, the Pigeons began to move off… and at sunrise all that were able to fly had disappeared. The howlings of the wolves now reached our ears, and the foxes, lynxes, cougars, bears..
It was then that the authors of all this devastation began their entry amongst the dead, the dying and the mangled. The pigeons were picked up and piled in heaps, until each had as many as he could possibly dispose of, when the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder.”

Such massive flocks were not unusual: The largest known nesting site was documented in 1871 in Wisconsin with 136 million birds covering 850 square miles.
Their large flocks and communal behavior made the pigeons easy prey for hunters. Faced with massive commercial hunting and loss of habitat, their numbers dwindled. Then, a century ago, they were gone.
Juvenile Passenger Pigeon (left), male (center), female (right), by Louis Agassiz Fuertes
A 19th century Passenger Pigeon shoot
The Passenger Pigeon’s story is particularly cautionary for us these days because, with climate change, we may be on the verge of witnessing a tidal wave of similar extinctions.…

By Maureen Lahiff
Come see a really good mudflat. Come see a really good restored mudflat.
From late July to early April, Middle Harbor Shoreline Park in Oakland hosts a wealth of water birds.   The encircling arms of the park make it easy to observe the mudflat fairly close up even when the tide is out, though having a spotting scope (or a trip leader who has one) is really helpful.
I’ve had a number of Bay Area birding firsts at Middle Harbor. The first Eared Grebe I ever saw with his “ears on” was at Middle Harbor, in late March a few years back. Here is where I first saw a Bay Area Peregrine Falcon on the hunt. On a cold and windy winter’s morning, the ducks and shorebirds at adjacent Point Arnold all took off at once. Sure enough, a Peregrine soared in over the water from the north, close in and on the hunt.
Owned and operated by the Port of Oakland, Middle Harbor is one of the East Bay’s newest parks. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never think to look for it in the middle of the sprawling container ship port.
Exposed mudflats on a foggy morning at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, looking west towards San Francisco / Photo by Ilana DeBare
Western Sandpipers at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park / Photo by Bob Lewis
Middle Harbor and its surrounding area were originally tidal wetlands and estuarine marshes. But as cities and shipping expanded rapidly on both sides of the bay, the harbor became a transportation hub.
The once-shallow wetlands were dredged to a depth of 40 feet. Material from the dredging was used to build up land for the Oakland Naval Supply Depot, creating a promontory that today is known as Point Arnold and forms one of the two “arms” bordering the park.
The other boundary of the harbor was the Western Pacific Mole, where the train ended and passengers could refresh themselves before boarding a ferry for San Francisco.
(Bet you didn’t know that a mole is not just a burrowing mammal, skin growth, or internal spy. It’s also, according to Merriam-Webster, a “massive work formed of masonry and large stones or earth laid in the sea as a pier or breakwater.” Oakland also had much larger moles for the Southern Pacific and Central Pacific railroads.)
The naval depot closed in 1998 and the central part of the park opened in fall 2004.…

By Ilana DeBare
San Francisco already has one of the country’s first laws aimed at preventing bird-window collisions in new commercial buildings.
Now — with support from Golden Gate Bird Alliance — the city is taking aim at the problem of bird-window collisions in private residences too.
The City Planning Department is sponsoring a new, voluntary Bird-Friendly Monitoring and Certification Program  that will:

1. Recruit city residents to monitor the incidence of bird-window collisions around their home.
2. Help residents with large or hazardous windows to take steps to reduce the risk of collisions.

“We are especially interested in residential properties because this is generally the land use that is found near our parks and open spaces, and where we expect more birds,” said Andrew Perry of the City Planning Department.
“So far, there hasn’t been enough scientific data gathered on bird-window collisions in urban residential settings,” said Cindy Margulis, Executive Director of Golden Gate Bird Alliance. “San Francisco’s new program will allow people to contribute to our understanding of an important conservation issue by doing very simple things right in their own backyard.”
Black-and-White Warbler at a window / Photo by allaboutbirds.org
San Francisco’s new monitoring program is seeking participants — especially people living near parks or open spaces — who will check the exterior of their home for dead or injured birds at least once a week. Participants will input their findings on a city web site, allowing city planners to develop data on the location and frequency of bird-window collisions.
In return, participants will receive a decal certifying them as a “Bird-friendly Resident.” They will be eligible for raffle prizes. More significantly, they can also seek city advice and subsidies in choosing a window treatment to decrease the risk of collisions.
Treatments to prevent collisions range from simple measures such as installing insect screens or hanging strings in front of large picture windows, to more sophisticated measures such as applying textured film over windows or completely replacing windows with fritted glass. The city will offer a limited number of subsidies to residents with hazardous windows larger than 24 square feet.
The SF monitoring program is open to all residents, but the city especially wants participants from the green areas on this map.
“We’ll work with homeowners on a case by case basis,” Perry said. “Because we’re focused on the design and feel of buildings, we don’t want to impose one treatment type for all buildings.…

By Dave Quady
Like many other birders, I always look forward to the July issue of The Auk, the journal of the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU). Why? Because it contains the annual supplement to the AOU’s bird checklist, which governs the taxonomy followed by North American birders.
The run-up to publication usually includes speculation about changes the supplement will bring: will they be minor (“Oh, a few species lost the hyphens in their names”), or taxonomy-rattling (“What? Falcons were put behind the woodpeckers?”). Rumors precede publication, of course, so the supplement’s content is rarely a surprise. But no change is official until it’s published.
This year’s supplement affected the family Rallidae – the rails, marsh-loving birds that some people are said to be thinner than. Clapper Rail Rallus longirostris, a bird of mainly coastal marshes, was split into three species, and King Rail Rallus elegans of the eastern U.S. was split into two.
California’s three subspecies of Rallus longirostris become subspecies of Rallus obsoletus, which is given the English name Ridgway’s Rail. It has three resident subspecies: yumanensis (in the lower Colorado River area), levipes (in coastal southern California), and nominate obsoletus, (in coastal marshes of the San Francisco Bay area).
The levipes subspecies of Ridgway’s (formerly Clapper) Rail / Photo by US FWS
The yuma subspecies of Ridgway’s (formerly Clapper) Rail / Photo by US FWS
The obsoletus subspecies of Ridgway’s Rail (formerly California Clapper Rail) / Photo by Bob Lewis
All three subspecies are on the Federal endangered species list; two are also on the state endangered species list (SE) while the third is state threatened (ST). The split will not change their conservation status, but authorities will probably come up with new English names for the subspecies.
Subspecies yumanensis (ST) was called “Yuma Clapper Rail.” Modifying it to “Yuma Ridgway’s Rail” seems awkward, but could work. Something similar could be done with levipes (SE), formerly called “Light-footed Clapper Rail.” But how about our local obsoletus, formerly called “California Clapper Rail?” One wouldn’t want to call it “California Ridgway (formerly Clapper) Rail,” for sure, and “Ridgway’s California Rail” isn’t much better. A good English name doesn’t immediately come to mind.
In the aftermath of the Clapper Rail split, that English name was transferred to a species with another scientific name. Thus, Clapper Rail is now the English name for Rallus crepitans, and birders who have seen it in east coast saltwater marshes got a new life bird as they read the news – assuming they’d already recorded what’s now called Ridgway’s Rail.…

By John Tysell
I met our guide, Harry Fuller, in Ashland, Oregon where he lives. I had done a previous Golden Gate Bird Alliance trip with him in 2013 in the Cascade and Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon. It had been a great birding experience, so I was looking forward to spending the next three days with him on his June 2014 trip to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. 
Susan and Maureen, also GGBA members, joined us early on Wednesday morning and our car caravan headed east down Dead Indian Road. Malheur — a high desert basin in southeastern Oregon with an average elevation of 4,000 feet — is a birding hotspot. The snowpack on the Steens Mountains delivers ample water for wetlands, streams, meadows and grasslands. The varied habitat provides shelter and abundant food, especially insects. Since it is a perfect setting for breeding, I was hoping to see young at this time of the year.
As we climbed up the foothills, the trees became fir and pine. We stopped for a Lazuli Bunting and a Mountain Bluebird along the way. Near Howard Prairie Lake, we saw Sandhill Cranes in a meadow with young. A must stop was Rocky Point on the Eastern shore of Upper Klamath Lake. The highlight was a pair of Red-breasted Sapsuckers flying in and out of their cavity nest feeding babies.
Adult and juvenile Sandhill Cranes by John Tysell
Red-breasted Sapsucker after feeding nestling by John Tysell
Close to Fort Klamath along the Sun River, we stopped to see Ospreys with fledglings in the nest. A Bald-headed Eagle soared in the distance. At Collin’s Rest Stop, I saw my first American Dipper, one of fourteen new species I would add to my life list. Then the highlight of the day: Red Crossbills.
After leaving the town of Silver Lake, we passed a large dark-brown bird on a post. The walkie-talkie crackled. Susan observed that it was too large to be a hawk, so the caravan turned around to find a Golden Eagle. Further East in Christmas Valley, we saw Ferruginous Hawks, a Long-billed Curlew and Wilson’s Phalarope.
Late in the afternoon, we finally arrived at the Malheur Field Station on Sodhouse Road near New Princeton, Oregon. It is isolated and filled with wildlife. Our dorm was old and worn but clean. Despite the drought, the faucet leaked freely. On our way to the cafeteria, Common Nighthawks were seen sitting on the railings.…