By Ilana DeBare

San Francisco painter Robert Steiner has won the annual contest for the federal Duck Stamp — for the second time — with a beautiful image of a Common Goldeneye.

This means the Richmond district resident’s painting will appear on 2.1 million Duck Stamps, which are issued with hunting licenses.

Regardless of how you feel about hunting, it’s a great honor for a dedicated and talented local bird artist. The S.F. Chronicle ran a really nice profile of Steiner this weekend, and noted that he is one of only three living waterfowl artists to win the federal Duck Stamp twice. He has also won various state duck stamp competitions 83 times, more than any other artist, dead or alive.

Steiner works by photographing ducks at duck clubs near the Sutter Buttes each January, after hunting season is over. From thousands of photos, he develops hundreds of sketches and ultimately two or three paintings each year.

Chronicle reporter Sam Whiting wrote that the “painting of the goldeneye for the federal contest is a composite of five or six photographs of ducks, taking the best feature from each one…. Out of the sunlight, the head of the real bird is black. Its bright green head in the painting is a trick of iridescence, like a rainbow.”

“I’m trying to do for ducks what Vermeer did for Dutch women,” Steiner says. “You can’t win on sheer skill. Your painting really has to stand out, and the way I do that is with extreme contrast of dark and light.”

If you’re not familiar with the Duck Stamp, it is a $15 stamp that is a required purchase with every federal hunting license. It has raised over $800 million since 1934 to preserve 5 million acres of waterfowl habitat  — a major source of land acquisition for many of our national wildlife refuges.

Recently some folks including bird blogger Larry Jordan and wildlife photographer Ingrid Taylar have come up with an innovative proposal for a federal Wildlife Conservation Stamp — a similar revenue stream that would appeal to birders, nature photographers, and others who value wildlife refuges for non-hunting purposes.

Wildlife stamp backers write:

“A 2013 Wildlife Society Bulletin piece states that changing demographics and cultural shifts away from hunting could result in a $14.3 million annual loss to refuges….…

When I moved into my current house 11 years ago, I moved away from a creekside filled with trees. In the trees were nesting Cooper’s Hawks. I woke most mornings to their calls.  In the early summer the Coop baby elongated whistle would alert me to evening playtime of juvenile Coops.

So when I moved, I knew I’d miss the nesting Cooper’s Hawks.

Two weeks after moving into my new place in an urban/industrial area of Oakland, I was heading down the driveway on my way to work.  I looked down the driveway and there was a Cooper’s Hawk on the fence across the street.  “Thank you,” I whispered to the hawk.  I headed to work and looked for the Coop when I got home.  It was another couple of months before I again saw one, and this time it was three juveniles playing on the telephone poles at the end of the block.

Every year since then until last year I’ve watched the Cooper’s Hawks raise their young in trees less than a block from my house.  I’ve seen them sitting on the roof of my house, taking birds out of my feeders, bathing in my bird bath.  One year a juvenile took a bird and settled down on my garden trellis with the bird clutched in her talon.  She was startled from her perch by one of my dogs heading out the back door.  She flew to the plum tree dropping her prey in the garden.  I picked it up and placed it on the roof of the chicken coop and she retrieved it soon after.  (They’ve never bothered the chickens.)

Then two years ago the Coops stopped nesting in the trees.  I did see a juvenile in the yard but could not find where they were nesting.  Again this year I see Coops around but haven’t found their nest.  I keep listening for the baby Coop whistle but have been disappointed so far.

One evening about a month ago, I was in the kitchen fixing dinner.  The dogs were scattered around the room hoping something good would drop to the floor.

I heard a rustling from my bedroom and ran with one dog ahead of me and one dog following to see what was happening.  I got there just in time to see a Cooper’s Hawk disappear behind the curtain. …

By Carol Lombardi

We flew over perfect grids of Midwestern fields into Milwaukee’s early evening, excited to be part of Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s May birding trip to Wisconsin. Our guide Rich Cimino of Yellowbilled Tours was waiting at the curb before our luggage arrived. All logistics meshed, all gear was present and accounted for. Rich’s rented minivan was roomy with only four birders (ourselves, Rich, and Chris Bard), so everyone had a window seat and space to stow gear. We stayed at the Hampton Inn, Wauwatosa: Excellent staff, great breakfast, comfy rooms. Our first Wisconsin dinner that evening hinted at the robust cuisine we’d encounter all week. Boy, can you eat in Wisconsin!

Monday we were on the road at 7 a.m. in bright sunshine (after a generous breakfast, of course) for the drive to Horicon Marsh, which stretches some 10 by 4 miles and is accessed via several roads. Purple Martin houses near the Visitor Center hosted a dozen pairs. Several stops produced Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Eastern Phoebe, Yellow-throated Vireo, Blue Jay, Sedge Wren, Eastern Bluebird, Gray Catbird, Black-and-white Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Palm Warbler, Bobolink, and Northern Cardinal in addition to plenty of birds familiar to Californians. Our casual posting of a pair of Black-necked Stilts inspired a query from e-Bird — they’re rare here.

Nashville Warbler / Photo by Rich CiminoTuesday took us to Lake Park, a Victorian creation by Frederick Law Olmsted in central Milwaukee on the shore of Lake Michigan. Mature trees (plus a few bird feeders) lured a wondrous variety of warblers — Black-throated Green, Palm, Black-throated Blue, Chestnut-sided, Yellow, Blackburnian, Magnolia, Cape May, Tennessee. Many were easily and clearly seen from an overpass that put us halfway up their favorite pine tree and helped us avoid serious Warbler Neck-itis. We logged American Redstart, Red-eyed Vireo, Gray Catbird, Indigo Bunting, Pine Siskin, Chimney Swift, and Red-headed and Red-bellied Woodpeckers.

Local birders (befriended by Rich the week before) helped us sort through the second-by-second flybys. We found a Northern Waterthrush bobbing along a brushy ravine; an Olive-sided Flycatcher called for a “mar-tee-ni.” After lunch at the Italian grocery wonderland that is Glorioso’s, we visited the Riverside Park Urban Ecology Center, which is laboring to restore the stream nearby, and were rewarded with a leisurely look at a Solitary Sandpiper and a pair of Eastern Kingbirds.…

By Ilana DeBare

Some weeks are quiet. It’s fine to go birding, take some photos, come home and have a glass of wine.

Then there are weeks like this, when we are asking our members to speak out on two different conservation issues!

Lead Ammunition Ban – Support AB 711

Lead is a dangerous toxin and has been banned in toys, paint and gasoline. But it’s still commonly used by hunters in ammunition. Lead fragments accumulate in prey and in the carcasses left behind by hunters, which then are eaten by raptors such as California Condors and Golden Eagles.

In fact, the leading cause of death today for adult California Condors is not old age — it’s lead poisoning. One in five free-flying condors has ingested such significant levels of lead from ammunition that it is at risk of dying from lead poisoning.

This summer, California Audubon is sponsoring a bill to ban lead ammunition in California.  AB 711 has passed the State Assembly. Now we need to get AB 711 through the state Senate — and we need your help!

Equally important, do you have friends or relatives outside the Bay Area in swing districts? Tell them about this issue and ask them to call their state senators in support of AB 711.

You can find more information —  including sample text of a letter — in the Action Alert we sent out this week.