Editor’s Note: Golden Gate Bird Alliance member Alan Krakauer is studying Greater Sage-Grouse behavior in Wyoming. A longer version of this post appears on his blog.

By Alan Krakauer

One of North America’s most spectacular birds is also a species that not many people have seen — the Greater Sage-Grouse.

Given the spectacular plumage of a male Sage-Grouse in display, why are these birds so hard to see? A quick look at a female Sage-Grouse tells you the girls are built for crypsis — well adapted to blending in with their environment. For most of the year male Sage-Grouse also play the hiding game, so unless scared into flight they may pass unnoticed.

Yet for a couple of months in winter and spring, males come into their traditional display grounds (called leks, from a Swedish word for “child’s play”) and put on one of the greatest shows on earth. These leks are often in fairly remote areas, and males typically attend them only in the early morning hours. Both of these reasons help explain why getting a look at this spectacle can be a bit of a challenge.

Greater Sage-Grouse / Photo by Alan Krakauer

The Sage-Grouse’s breeding clusters have captivated not only birders but evolutionary biologists as well. Unlike about 90 percent of birds, the males in lekking species don’t form a bond with their mate or provide any child care. Scientists are still trying to unravel some of the puzzles that leks represent:

• Why do males cluster together to display, rather than searching around for females, following females, or spacing themselves farther apart and defending larger territories like most other birds do?
• If males aren’t helping raise the kids, why are females so picky?
• What benefits do females get from choosing one male instead of another?
• And given that females often pick only a few among the many males on a lek, why do the “loser” males bother to stick around?

Lekking animals tend to be high on the charisma scale. Besides the spectacular Sage-Grouse and their cousins the Prairie Chickens and Sharp-Tailed Grouse, other lek-breeders include some of the most beautiful and acrobatic birds out there — birds of paradise, neotropical mannikins, peacocks, cock-of-the-rock, some hummingbirds, and Ruffs.

When we see a species in which males are larger or more colorful than females, we presume these differences are related to an evolutionary process called sexual selection, where one sex — often the males — competes either directly for access to females or indirectly by producing the best advertisement among the other males.…

By Ivan Samuels

When was the last time you went birding without binoculars?  Most birders would consider this a bad idea for obvious reasons.  But with experience, you would be surprised how many species you can identify without optics.  Birding by ear, by definition, implies that you don’t even need to see the bird for species recognition.  And in many cases, you already know the species you are watching as you begin to raise your binoculars.

In thinking about these questions, I started to wonder what a “big day” would have been like for Native Americans in the Bay Area during centuries past.  There are obvious differences of course, not the least of which is the amount of habitat that once existed.  Some species once common are now rare or extirpated, while others once absent now occur here.  But the variety of habitats once present can still be found today, and I started to daydream about what it would take to do a “Native American Big Day.”

Thinking beyond optics, the list quickly grows – no binoculars, scope, car, bike, flashlight, watch, playback equipment, phone, etc. etc.  But the rule is: If they could have done it, so can you.  You can go owling, but no alarm to wake you up or light to guide your way.  You can’t use an iPod, but pishing or whistling songs is perfectly acceptable.  You can’t drive, so you will need to plan carefully to insure you can hit the most habitats possible on foot.

Ivan Samuels birding (with optics) in southeastern Brazil

And you won’t be able to scope waterbirds, but with the aid of a kayak you can get pretty close to them.  It’s not important that your kayak is made out of plastic.  The point is, they could have done it.  And we can quickly agree that the time to try is during spring, when bird song and brighter plumages greatly help your IDs.

So once I heard that the Golden Gate Bird Alliance Birdathon was to be a spring tradition, the challenge was on!  I soon settled on the Bolinas area, as I regularly bird this species-rich area of west Marin County, and many different habitats occur within a short distance.  Furthermore, the Bolinas Lagoon itself seemed perfect for the kayak portion of the adventure.  The Coast Miwok is the group that once inhabited this diverse ecosystem, and so was born my team, “Miwok-Style.”…

By Phila Rogers

This morning is one of those days when there are such high spirits among the bird community that everything within earshot is caught up in the irresistible merriment.

It’s all because of the robins. “Clucking” and “chucking,” even bursting into brief explosions of song, they launch their attacks on the local berry crop.  Gorged with fruits, they fly – if they can — up into the surrounding trees to briefly digest their plunder before dropping down for more.

Sometimes in the midst of the frenzy, they fly into my windows.  It all suggests inebriation, but such impeccable experts as the staff at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum say, “no.”  All this bumping into things and even failing to get airborne is, instead, a matter of over-consumption, not of consuming over-ripe berries.

American Robin with berries / Photo by Bob Lewis

I like the story that robins are feathered distilleries, holding berries in their crop until they’ve reached the desired alcoholic content.  “No,” again say the killjoys. It’s simply (or not so simply) the excitement of a good meal in the company of others.

Their co-conspirators are often the sleek, elegant Cedar Waxwings.  No half-digested berries dribble on their perfect, burnished feathers.  Like masked robbers — or “Tao philosophers,” according to the poet Robert Francis in Waxwings — they share the feast without sacrificing decorum.  Once they have their fill, they move on in tight groups, calling back and forth in their high-pitched “zees.”

The high spirits of the morning are shared by all the other birds in the neighborhood.  Flickers, Red-breasted Nuthatches, chickadees — all sound off so as not to lose their place in the chorus.

This winter berry bacchanal will continue until most of the local berries are consumed and robins forsake the group to pair up for the serious business of building a nest and raising young.

Though the calendar reads only mid-February, spring is well underway in coastal California.  March 21 may mark the celestial spring, but official spring here begins on February 5, the midpoint between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox.

Anna's Hummingbird / Photo by Bob Lewis

Look around for confirmation – acacias in full golden glory, plums and almond in bloom, bulbs of every kind opening.  And in the bird world, juncos and Bewick’s Wrens are singing, and Allen’s Hummingbirds have arrived from the south to begin their breeding season. …

By Burr Heneman

Rich Stallcup was the giant of birding in Northern California and beyond. There is so much to miss about him now that he’s no longer with us in person. To be with him in the field and glimpse the “feathered nation” — or snakes or salamanders or butterflies — was to fall in love with them for life. Rich could also write beautifully, and from the heart. He wrote most of all about birding, but there were occasional thoughtful and thought-provoking pieces on hard issues that he couldn’t remain silent about.

Rich wrote “Farewell Skymaster” (below) in 1981 for a special 20-page Point Reyes Bird Observatory Newsletter devoted entirely to the California Condor. Today, with more than 400 condors in the skies over California, Arizona, and northern Baja, it’s hard to imagine the controversy and deep divisions within the ornithological and birding communities caused by the condor recovery program 30 years ago.

The condor population was falling steadily and had dwindled to 22 birds in the wild. The question that engendered fierce debate was whether, as a last resort, to bring all of those birds into captivity for a captive breeding program in spite of a failed attempt in the 1950s. The National Audubon Society, co-founder with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the Condor Research Center, supported the plan. Golden Gate Bird Alliance, the largest NAS chapter, vigorously opposed it.

California Condor / Photo by Phil Armitage

Some of the field biologists most familiar with condors believed the experiment would be doomed to failure — the birds were just too fragile. Moreover, if they could be induced to breed in captivity, their every-other-year breeding cycle would not produce enough offspring to make a difference. Dave Desante summarized that view in a closely reasoned article in the Newsletter.

Meanwhile, experts in breeding birds in captivity at the San Diego Zoo and Los Angeles Zoo believed they could succeed and wanted the chance to prove it. In any case, it was the only chance to save the species. S. Dillon Ripley, then head of the Smithsonian and a respected ornithologist, represented that perspective in an interview I did with him for the Newsletter in which he urged the decision-makers to “take the ultimate risk.”

PRBO board member Frank Pitelka of UC Berkeley, another leading ornithologist and conservation biologist, argued in the Newsletter that the millions of dollars needed for a risky condor recovery program would be better invested in less expensive efforts to save many other endangered species.…