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.…

Editor’s note: We are nearing the end of peak winter birding season in the Central Valley. If you haven’t been there, now is the time! Golden Gate Bird Alliance board member David Anderson offers some tips and routes.

By David Anderson

The sky filled suddenly with a blizzard of snow geese, lifting in waves near and far — ten thousand or more. A thousand undulated in the distance, winging high; a few thousand rose then settled back close by; several thousand more circled restlessly.

For a while, the horizon filled with their movements, alternating bright flashes of white as they turned in the sun. Then, the various groups landed or headed away to work (foraging the nearby fields). A cacophony of noise – almost hurting our ears – filled the air with the geese.  Ears ringing, eyes wide, I laughed in pure joy. The host of wildlife filling the bright, blue sky was a wonder to behold, a scene of nature’s glory.

Our viewing platform was in the midst of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, part of a system stretching the length of the Central Valley from Redding to Bakersfield. Thirty refuges provide nearly 400,000 acres of wildlife habitat.  California wildlife management areas add almost half a million acres more. The two systems give protection to tremendous numbers of migratory birds coming here for the winter, as well as numerous other wildlife species. These lands offer incredible viewing, especially the areas between Willows and Los Banos.

Clouds of geese at Sacramento NWR / Photo by David Anderson

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year reported 48.6 million ducks in the U.S. and Canada, the most recorded in the 57 years of surveys! Clearly the breeding conditions were optimal. The estimate was that 5 million ducks would winter in the wetlands of the Central Valley, along with record numbers of geese.  A mid-winter survey shows about 4 million ducks and one and a quarter million geese. That’s a lot of feathers out there.

We’re reaping the rewards with incredible viewing opportunities, enhanced by long stretches of clear, sunny weather.  Snow Geese, Ross’s Geese, Canada Geese, and White-fronted Geese all appear in big numbers.  Northern Pintails, American Wigeons, Northern Shovelers, and Green-winged Teal are in even larger numbers.

Colusa NWR

My favorite birding route from the Bay Area to the Central Valley is I-80 heading east past Vacaville, then I-505 across to I-5 near Dunnigan.  …