By Kimberly Jannarone 

Buena Vista is San Francisco’s oldest official park (1867), and it earns its name.  It’s a hilltop forest, with winding trails and views in all directions.  On a clear day, you can see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Pacific Ocean, and Alcatraz, as well as the Bay Bridge, East Bay, and Mount Diablo.  While you’re gazing at the view, you’ll also notice a steady stream of birds cruising by.  Pay closer attention, and you’ll see that quite a few of them are nesting, making this urban forest their home.

The park’s oak woodlands and shrubby understory entice many birds to set up shop. In the spring, a little patience will yield views of parent birds bringing food to their young, including Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Pygmy Nuthatches, Dark-eyed Juncos, Bushtits, Brown Creepers, Hutton’s Vireos, Mourning Doves, and Western Scrub Jays.

View of Golden Gate from Buena Vista Park / Photo by Bob Gunderson

Standing in a small cluster of oaks, you can observe a Hutton’s Vireo sing its sweet warbling song, grab a bright green caterpillar, bash it against a branch, sing again, and disappear.  Underneath a tall redwood or an old eucalyptus, you can hear the sweet, high song of a Brown Creeper, and then spy it ferrying a cluster of tiny black bugs in its slender, curved beak up the trunk.

Bushtit in Buena Vista Park / Photo by Bob Gunderson Dark-eyed Junco in Buena Vista Park / Photo by Bob Gunderson

Both Allen’s and Anna’s Hummingbirds nest in Buena Vista, and they especially enjoy the plantings on the top of the hill and the recently-restored habitat on the Corona Heights side. The central hill is an ideal place to watch their aerial displays — they climb upwards and swoop down, with all of Marin as their backdrop.  More nesters: Pine Siskins high in the Monterey pines, Song Sparrows in the weedy ravine on the north side, Downy Woodpeckers in the oaks, White-Crowned Sparrows near Haight Street, and Brown-Headed Cowbirds on the south side.  Hooded Orioles nest in palms in near the park and bring their young to forage in the oaks near the southern boardwalk.

Spring brings gratifying migrants, including Western Wood Pewees, Cedar Waxwings, Black-throated Gray and Wilson’s Warblers, and Black-headed Grosbeaks, including one grosbeak who lingered well into winter last year in native plantings on the Corona Heights side.  Olive-sided Flycatchers come through, and each of the three years I’ve been watching, one claims a tall snag near the southern side, sallying out after insects and returning to its favorite perch.…

This spring, Golden Gate Bird Alliance partnered with the East Oakland Boxing Association to offer a pilot eight-week high school environmental program. EOBA is a 25-year-old youth leadership organization located on 98th Avenue, just a few miles from Arrowhead Marsh. Besides offering athletic training, EOBA hosts after-school tutoring, an organic garden internship, classes in dancing, cooking, and more. GGBA was able to offer EOBA a field-trip based environmental program, introducing ten high school students to the natural areas of the Bay through weekly trips to local parks.  Activities included birding, bug identification, native plant restoration, and a tour of a wildlife rehabilitation center. The partnership with EOBA was a way to expand our previous high school internship program to serve a larger number of teens.

Martin Rochin, a former high school intern with Golden Gate Bird Alliance, was able to return to work with us as a college intern for the program with EOBA. Below he reflects on his experience as mentor to the high school students.

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By Martin Rochin

I first began working with Golden Gate Bird Alliance in 2007, when I was only 16 years old.  As a child in a low-income family in East Oakland, I hadn’t really explored the natural world around me. I seldom strayed from my bus route to school.

When my teacher at Oakland Unity High School told me about the internship opportunity at Golden Gate Bird Alliance, the idea of being outdoors, identifying birds, and doing restoration work was foreign to me. Through the internship, I was able to visit places such as Arrowhead Marsh and Alcatraz – places that I had been surrounded by all along, but was completely unfamiliar with.

This was what I had in mind when Marissa Ortega-Welch offered me an opportunity to come back and work with GGBA as an assistant in the first-ever environmental high school program at the East Oakland Boxing Association. Six years after my high school internship experience with GGBA, I had completed two years of college at U.C. Santa Barbara. I was back in Oakland, working to raise money to complete college. I had reached out to Marissa and Anthony DeCicco at GGBA simply in the hopes of finding a job that would be more enriching than working in retail.

Martin Rochin (far right) as a high school student, on a trip to Yosemite with the GGBA high school internship program in 2007.…

By Ilana DeBare

Whew. The fundraising is over, the birding is over, the judging is over, and now even the celebrating is over.

And get this — together we raised more than $47,000 in Birdathon 2013!

This is by far the most we’ve ever raised in four years of Birdathons. In addition, our expenses this year were much less than in the past, in part because Alan Harper and Carol Baird donated their beautiful home as the site for the Birdathon Awards Dinner last Sunday afternoon. (Click here to see a full set of photos of the event.)

These results are a testament to the love and commitment that you, GGBA members and friends, feel for this organization and for the Bay Area birds and habitat that are at the center of our mission.

This has been a tough year financially for GGBA. And you all came through more than ever. Twenty volunteer field trip leaders led Birdathon trips ranging from the Richmond shoreline to Pinnacles National Park. Over 70 people went on those trips or on self-guided ones, raising money from friends and family —  that’s an average of nearly $700 raised for every Birdathon participant!

Birdathon 2013 Awards Dinner in the Oakland Hills / Photo by Peter Maiden

More than 450 individuals donated to GGBA during Birdathon — plus we had generous corporate sponsors at Farella Braun & Martel, Dolphin Charters, SCS Global Services Inc., Waste Solutions Inc., Animal Farm Pet Supplies, EMS Solutions Inc., LSA Associates and Recology.

Perhaps our favorite part was those GGBA members who had never done any fundraising before… but went out and raised $100, $300, even $1000! You know who you are. Feel proud.

But enough on the money stuff. We know what you really want to hear about — the winners. Here are the awards that we announced on Sunday:

Elsie Roemer Conservation Award – Dan Murphy (Note: We will be holding a reception in San Francisco to honor Dan’s long history of leadership with GGBA later this summer. Stay tuned for details.)

Paul Covel Conservation Education Award – Dave Quady

Most species on a field trip of six hours or less:

• First place – Glen Tepke and the Oakland Ouzels (105 species)
• Second place – Chris & Gary Bard and the Alameda Avocets (91)
• Third place – Angie Geiger and the Lake Merced team (57)

Pat Bacchetti accepts a Birdathon award for Glen Tepke and the Oakland Ouzels / Photo by Peter Maiden Applauding the award winners / Photo by Peter Maiden

Most species on a field trip of more than six hours:

• First place – Dan & Joan Murphy and Murphy’s MOB (106 species)
• Second place – Michelle Labbe, Jeremy Andersen and the Birding by Bike team (88)
• Third place – Steve & Carol Lombardi, Rich Cimino and the Mines Road team (81)

Best Bird 2013 — Rusty Scalf for the California Condor (Pinnacles National Park field trip)

Dave Quady presents Rusty Scalf with the Best Bird award / Photo by Peter Maiden

Birdathon Hero 2013 – Ivan Samuels, for Miwok-style birding and fundraising prowess

Individual Fundraising:

• First place – Bob Lewis (raised more than $2000)
• Second place – Chris & Gary Bard (raised more than $1400)
• Third place – Glen Tepke (raised more than $1200)

Team Fundraising:

• First place – Tilden Park team, led by Bob Lewis
• Second place – Elkhorn Slough team, led by Bob Lewis

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By Ilana DeBare

Last month we wrote about the Caltrans netting on a Petaluma bridge construction site that was trapping and killing dozens of Cliff Swallows.

Many Golden Gate Bird Alliance members — as well as other conservation groups — wrote to Caltrans asking it  to adopt less lethal methods of keeping birds from nesting on the bridge during construction. But Caltrans hasn’t listened, and insists that the problem is “solved” even while birds continue to be trapped.

So on Friday, GGBA joined a lawsuit against Caltrans filed by Native Songbird Care & Conservation, the Center for Biological Diversity and several other groups (including Marin and Madrone Audubon).

A lawsuit is a blunt, costly instrument. But sometimes it’s necessary when government officials refuse to listen to the public and take reasonable steps to protect wildlife and comply with environmental laws. This is one of those cases.

The press release about the lawsuit is below. Thanks to all of you who sent letters to Caltrans! (Even if Caltrans didn’t listen.) If you’d like to support us in this next step, we are accepting donations to help cover our legal costs in this suit. Click here to donate, and in the comment box on the donation page, write “Petaluma swallows.”

Swallows trapped in Caltrans netting / Photo courtesy of Native Songbird Care & Conservation

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Lawsuit Against Highway Agencies Targets Deaths of Migratory Swallows

Deadly Netting in Petaluma Has Killed, Injured More than 100 Swallows

SAN FRANCISCO – Conservation and animal protection groups filed a lawsuit Friday against the California Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration for causing and allowing the deaths of migratory cliff swallows nesting under bridges at a highway widening project in Petaluma, Calif. The agencies refuse to remove deadly netting installed at bridge overpasses as part of a Caltrans highway widening project along Highway 101 in the Marin-Sonoma Narrows. The netting has killed and injured more than 100 swallows in a one-month period.

“Incompetence and indifference by Caltrans is killing swallows that have just travelled 6,000 miles to return to a traditional nesting site, which the agency should have known about,” said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Caltrans continues to say the problem is fixed, but the netting is ineffective and deadly. There are better ways to discourage birds from nesting at a construction site.”

The entrapment and killing of swallows violates the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and National Environmental Policy Act.…

By Corny Foster

If you are walking the north end of Crissy Field beach in the Presidio, you can easily mistake a Western Snowy Plover for one more ripple of sand. Camouflage helps the plovers evade predators. It is also the reason that few people know the birds are there until they almost step on them!

Luckily, there are some people who are highly aware of the plovers – Golden Gate Bird Alliance and National Park Service volunteers who spend one morning each month grooming the Crissy Field beach to maintain suitable habitat for the birds.

We recently reached the one-year anniversary of the Crissy Field volunteer program. Over the past year, volunteers put in 105 hours removing invasive weeds and collecting 36 buckets of trash – all aimed at ensuring a hospitable home for the sparrow-sized plovers.

The Western Snowy Plover — the Pacific Coast sub-species of the Snowy Plover — inhabits coastal areas from Washington State to Baja California. There are well-publicized programs to protect the plovers’ nesting beaches, such as those at Point Reyes and the Monterey Peninsula.

But the Bay Area’s wide sandy beaches are also important to the plovers as an overwintering site, where between July and May they build up energy reserves for migration and breeding.

Western Snowy Plovers resting in the dunes at Crissy Field / Photo by Matthew Zlatunich

The first person to identify these small birds was Lt. William P. Trowbridge, who supervised the construction of the San Francisco Tide Gauge near the Golden Gate in 1854. Trowbridge was a West Point graduate and an accomplished naturalist who collected biological specimens and sent them east to be examined and included in museum collections.

Of the many species he collected, some proved to be new to the body of scientific knowledge.  One such species was the Snowy Plover (Charadrius nivosus), which Trowbridge collected on May 8, 1854 from the shoreline dunes of the Presidio.

Habitat loss and degradation due to development, beach recreation, and non-native vegetation have contributed to a decline in the Western Snowy Plover population, which in March 1993 was listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.  Up to 100 of the estimated 2,300 birds remaining on the Pacific Coast overwinter in San Francisco on Ocean and Crissy Field beaches in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA).

Do you see the Snowy Plover in the foreground of the tide gauge station?…