Note: Golden Gate Bird Alliance is delighted to reprint this blog post by Rue Mapp, founder of Outdoor Afro, an organization that reconnects African-Americans with natural spaces and one another through recreational activities such as camping, hiking, biking and birding. Rue lives in Oakland with her three children and worked as a Development Associate at GGBA in 2009-10.

By Rue Mapp

“I’m not really a birder.”

This is how I began my group introduction this weekend at a summit of leading bird and travel bloggers from around the United States in Tucson, Arizona. In this crowd, I considered labeling myself a birder risky, like I might be ousted as an imposter from the group of world-traveled birding experts with hundreds of species on their life lists.

But Sharon Stiteler — otherwise known as “Birdchick” — challenged me.

“Do you own a pair of binoculars?” she asked.

“Um, yeah,” I said.

“And how many bird books do you own?”

I stared at her blankly as I started running through my mind the bird guides I owned, and wondered if I should count the wildlife photography books too…

But before I could respond, Sharon said with a shrug, “You’re a birder.”

Busted.

Our group came together to network and help Swarovski Optik (yes, the crystal folks) learn about the role of social media and bloggers to connect more people to the world of birding through their premium lenses. And over two days of focused bird searching and observing in the stunning mountains and valleys surrounding beautiful Tucson, we each had a chance to try out a variety of scopes and binoculars that put the bins I have been using at home these past two years to shame.

But there was something else about my birder disclaimer that nagged at me over the weekend, and I finally realized it had a lot to do with how the birding community is perceived beyond its traditional participants.

You see, many people I know have not even heard of the term “birding” as an activity to do, much less be.

For generations, African Americans have known and identified birds and other wildlife necessary for living in close contact with rural land and for pleasure. But in recent generations, as more of us have moved to busy cities that distract us from the natural world, there is an opportunity to re-engage the appetite for birding again, although it is critical to make the experience directly relevant to how people can expand their quality of life.…

By Bob Lewis

I took a class with bird photographer Artie Morris in San Diego some years ago. His co-leader was Todd Gustafson, a well-known African safari photographer.  Todd had some guidelines for being a good nature photographer, which went something like this:

• Have good equipment. (That doesn’t mean the most expensive or latest-version cameras. It means equipment that you can depend on, that will do what you want it to do.)

• Know your equipment. (How to set the camera down a stop, where the autofocus button is, where to stand to be close but not inside the close-focusing capability of your lens, etc.)

• Have a plan. What do you hope to shoot: Shorebirds, migrants, heron nests, etc.?

• Know where to go to find your subject – and know when to go so the lighting and tide and wind direction are right.

• Know your subject. Does it feed in the mud or sand?  Will it defend a territory?  Is it courting or delivering food to a nest?  Is it likely to offer a wing-flap when preening?  In other words, spend some time learning the behavior of your subject so you can anticipate behaviors.

• Be prepared. Expect the action or behavior you are hoping to capture, and anticipate the exposure requirements of the shot.  Watch for warning signs, like chicks’ agitation or beak opening to presage arrival of an adult with food.

• Be quiet, move slowly, be patient. It may take time for the bird to arrive, and you may need to reposition yourself to get the right angle with the light, or arrival of the bird.

• Push the button.

  Know where to go: We wanted the warm feeling of evening light, but to be “up light” from these Royal Terns, we stood in the ocean, positioned so our shadows were near but not on the birds. We needed an ebb tide to provide them with a roosting place. Photo by Bob Lewis.

These are all good guidelines, and although I probably don’t always follow them, I usually wish I had.  But Todd didn’t talk about all the post-button-push activity, like downloading your image, archiving it in Lightroom, developing it in Photoshop, posting it on Flickr, printing at Costco or matting and framing.

And he didn’t mention the most important issue of all – why are you taking the picture, and what do you plan on doing with it?  The requirements for a good blog photo are different from those for a large format print or a projected image. …

By Burr Heneman

In his Metamorphoses, Ovid tells of a certain nymph, the most famous of all the wood nymphs. She was much beloved by the satyrs and spirits of the woods, who called her Syrinx. But she would have none of them as she was a faithful follower of chaste Diana, imitating her in her pastime of hunting, and in her virtue too.

One day as Syrinx was returning from the chase on Mount Lycaeus, Pan caught sight of her and determined to possess her. With Pan pursuing her, she fled through the pathless forest till she came to the deep waters of the Ladon River, which halted her flight. Pan reached for her, and in that instant, she prayed to her sisters of the stream to transform her.

They answered her prayer; Pan thought that he had at last caught hold of the nymph’s body but found he held only a handful of marsh reeds. As he stood sighing, the wind blew through the reeds and produced a thin, plaintive sound. “Still, you and I shall always be together,” he cried. Then he took reeds of unequal length and fastened them together with wax and made an instrument he called Syrinx and that we know as Pan pipes.

Syrinx underwent another metamorphosis centuries later when her name was given to the vocal organ of birds. The syrinx is located where the trachea divides into two bronchi, one of which leads to each lung. The name is especially apt for those few bird species that can control the two sides of the syrinx separately, creating two simultaneous tones. The result is the haunting “solo duets” of our Swainson’s Thrush and many of its relatives.

Hearing a slowed-down recording of the thrushes’ songs reveals a little of the mechanism without diminishing the magic. Here’s a web site that plays the songs at normal speed and slowed:

http://www.wildmusic.org/animals/thrush 

Whenever I hear it, I am young, and Nature is in her spring; wherever I hear it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of Heaven are not shut against me.

By Jack Dumbacher 

Some bird species show tremendous geographic variation in plumage or body measurements.  For example, Fox Sparrows have a sooty Pacific form and a reddish Taiga form, Song Sparrows look different on the California coast than they do further north in the Pacific Northwest, and Dark-eyed Juncos – well, where does one begin…?

But most birders rarely consider that these subtle differences might be adaptations to local conditions. And it’s rarer still when there is scientific research suggesting how these differences evolve or make birds locally more fit.

Russ Greenberg, from the Smithsonian Institution’s Migratory Bird Center, has been studying differences in plumage and bill size in Song Sparrows and Swamp Sparrows for many years.  He has long understood that different populations of sparrows have significant variation in bill size and shape, but figuring out the evolutionary function of the variation has been difficult.

Greenberg’s research group recently made a huge breakthrough by examining how birds lose heat.  As we all know, birds’ bodies have a thick layer of feathers that provides superior insulation for heat and cold, so birds don’t lose much heat from their bodies.  However, birds’ exposed bills and legs can dissipate a great deal of heat.

Using stunning infrared photography, Greenberg and his colleagues showed that bird bills can work as an effective “radiator” that burns off excess metabolic heat [1].  And because radiating heat does not waste water from evaporation (as does panting or sweating), it is an especially effective means for dissipating heat in dry environments, such as our California deserts. Meanwhile, in cooler environments, a smaller bill may prevent heat loss, thus helping to keep the birds warmer.

So with this potential explanation, Greenberg’s team needed birds to study.  They turned to California Song Sparrows that are widespread and variable and live in a variety of habitats from the cooler coastal areas to the warm central valley, the Sierras and western deserts [2].  They measured almost 1,500 Song Sparrow bills from museum collections, including those at California Academy of Sciences and U.C.…

By Noreen Weeden

Out at Heron’s Head Park in San Francisco on August 6, I saw my “first of season” Spotted Sandpiper.  In fact there were two Spotted Sandpipers – one with spots and the other spotless and clean-looking, both bobbing continuously as is the habit of this species.

Upon a closer look I noticed that the feathers of the spotted one appeared quite worn. This told me it was an adult bird, probably just returned from its breeding range — possibly in the Sierra or perhaps the Cascades. This bird still had most of the feathers it attained last spring in what is called its “alternate” or breeding plumage, when it has spots on its throat, breast and underparts.

The other Spotted Sandpiper looked quite different. For one thing, it had no spots, which is similar to how an adult looks in winter after it has molted into its “basic” or winter plumage. Also, this bird seemed slightly awkward compared to the other. Its legs were paler than the adult I had just seen, it had a lighter eye line, and its feathers — while looking fairly fresh — had some light edging. Taking all of these clues together, I concluded that this bird was a juvenile or “hatch-year” bird making its way for the first time to Heron’s Head Park. These two birds were the first Spotted Sandpipers I had seen in the Bay Area since early May.

Which brings me back to “first of season” (often abbreviated in birder blogs as FOS). August, while still summer for most people, is the beginning of autumn as far as birders are concerned. Late July and early August mark the time when many birds begin to disperse from their breeding grounds and move to their wintering grounds. So these two Spotted Sandpipers, one an adult and the other a juvenile, were my FOS Spotted Sandpipers.

Now is an excellent time to see some of the birds that are dispersing or migrating from their northern or interior breeding grounds. Over the next couple of months, more shorebirds, then songbirds and water birds will start returning or passing through the Bay Area on their fall migration.

Time to get out those binoculars! What first-of-season birds have you seen so far this month? Or what ones do you hope to see? …