By Rusty Scalf
The birds seem to come out of nowhere. Literally. The late afternoon sky is blue, with a few clouds, a few gulls, a couple of Ravens. Then I notice two tiny bat-like creatures well above the old smoke stacks.
Bat-like but not bats. Swifts. Tiny, gray, fast, erratic.
Then a group of five heading the same way meet the two and coalesce like little droplets to seven, then disappear. And so it begins. Fifteen minutes later there are perhaps 300 in a gnat-like swarm. Ten minutes more it’s 600 that decide, for a short while, to emulate a lava lamp, a tight morphing blob of birds, only to scatter to gnat-like entropy once again.
The light becomes long, the sun is just above the hills to the west, and the swifts keep building. Eventually they’re a vortex, swirling around the complex a couple hundred feet up.  As the light begins to fade, the scene above the old smoke stacks is other-worldly. The thousands of birds now make estimation a dizzying prospect.
My goal is to estimate how many swifts are present. Impossible really. The best one can do is follow a set protocol and hope for consistency. The task: train a scope on the top of a stack, click-counter in hand, and click once for every ten (or some gestalt sense of ten) swifts that enter. Entry rate seems to peak at approximately ten birds per second into the favored north stack.
Swifts at McNear Brickyard / Photo by Kerry Wilcox
A joint Golden Gate/Ohlone Audubon outing on Sept. 22, 2012 recorded an estimated 19,500 birds!  Double the highest previous count! The number of birds at the stacks rises and falls, often dramatically, day by day.  Larry Schwitters, who tracks the West Coast migration of Vaux’s Swifts, estimates (based both on Chimney Swift banding data and his own census numbers) that typical residence time at a migratory roost is 3-4 days within a range of 1 to 7 days.  At McNear Brickyard here in San Rafael, September counts of 500 to 10,000 have been typical. More than 19,000 was just over-the-top. Lucky, eh? Every once in a while…..
Swifts at McNear Brickyard / Photo by Kerry Wilcox
Vaux’s Swift is the smallest North American swift species, about 4.75 inches long, and closely related to the eastern Chimney Swift. Both species evolved to nest in large hollow snags, which have almost entirely disappeared in the east and become ever more scarce in the west.…

By Phila Rogers

When I first opened this dense volume, I wondered: “Do I really need another bird book?”  It’s a rhetorical question, of course, because I seldom can resist, whether it’s yet another guide book or a personal account of  a birding  life.

David Lukas’ Bay Area Birds  (Lukas Guides, 2012) is jam-packed with information written to compliment your field guide. These days, I do as much reading about birds as going into the field to find them.  With winter residents beginning to show up, I want to know more about the birds I’m hearing and seeing.

For each of 221 species, Lukas devotes often several paragraphs to what he calls their “Life History” and a shorter account  to “Range.”

The only illustration is a map showing his definition of “The Bay Area Region.” He divides the coastal mountains into the outer and inner coast ranges, including the Berkeley-Oakland hills as part of the inner coast range.  In my experience, this is not where they belong.  Their location opposite the Golden Gate creates a climate and habitat similar to the damper ranges along the coast.

That aside, Lukas gives himself an impressive mantel of authority by acknowledging the help of such notables in the birding community as Bob Richmond (who read the manuscript) and Rich Stallcup who gave his “papal blessing” to the project.

He gives one of the fullest, most interesting, treatments to one of our drabbest and most common resident birds — the California Towhee.  I like that.  For instance:

“Their habit of feeding on the open ground, along with their accommodating acceptance of humans, means they are a conspicuous presence around countless backyards, suburban neighborhoods, and city parks…. Pairs are highly sedentary and mate for life.”

Bay Area Birds has many interesting tidbits of information — Gnatcatchers pair up within 24 hours of their arrival on territory; Bufflehead are small enough to nest in tree cavities made by Northern Flickers; adult Wild Turkeys are reported to eat one pound of food per meal.

However, Lukas does not give sources for his information, which means the reader is asked to take his word.  What I like about Cornell’s Birds of North America Online is they back up descriptions with citations giving the researcher’s name and date of their paper so you can dig deeper.

Before writing my review, I passed the book on to an expert birding friend who was trained as a scientist. …

By Ilana DeBare

The San Joaquin River is the second longest river completely contained within California, but I bet you’ve never gone white-water rafting on it.

You’ve probably never even gone birding alongside it.

That’s because for the last 70 years, much of the San Joaquin River has been completely dry — diverted above the Friant Dam for use by Central Valley farmers.

Consider the photo below, of a section of the San Joaquin “river.” The water in this picture is only there as part of a test release; otherwise, what used to be a river is now a flat, sandy field.

But change is on the way.

In 2006, federal officials agreed to restore 60 miles of the San Joaquin River as part of a lawsuit settlement with environmental groups including the Audubon Society. The lawsuit was over the loss of habitat for Chinook salmon, and the settlement called for the river to be ready for the reintroduction of salmon by the end of 2012.

While the lawsuit and restoration plan centered on salmon, restoration of the San Joaquin will be good for a wide range of wildlife, including birds such as the Least Bell’s Vireo and the Yellow Warbler.

The Least Bell’s Vireo, an endangered neotropical migrant, was extirpated from the Central Valley in the 1970s. But in the last five years, individuals have been found at refuges where riparian habitat has been restored. Sixty miles of flowing river would mean a lot more habitat for them.

Least Bell's Vireo at nest / Photo by Moose Peterson, FWSThe Yellow Warbler, listed as a Species of Special Concern in California, today is found throughout its historic range — except in the Central Valley.  It relies on willows and shrubs, which don’t exist along a dried-up San Joaquin River but would flourish alongside a restored, flowing one.

Sounds like with the restoration, the future is looking better for Central Valley salmon, birds and other wildlife, right?

But the project also faces some possible hurdles. It’s a couple of years behind schedule due to delays in getting the implementing legislation through Congress. And although the restoration plan guarantees a continued flow of water for agriculture, some Central Valley farmers feel it isn’t enough, especially in dry years.

Central Valley Republican congressmen have tried to derail the restoration, most recently through a bill (HR 1837)  that passed the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate.…

By Ilana DeBare

About two weeks ago, there was a terrible incident in New York’s Central Park where a 73-year-old woman was raped while birding. I won’t go into the details except to say that the rapist was caught, and turned out to be a 42-year-old drifter with a history of felonies who had threatened other park goers too.

So the risk wasn’t specific to birding. The victim could have been anyone in the park. Still, the attack raised questions for me about personal safety and birding, particularly as a woman.

As an advanced-beginner birder, I typically go out with other people for help identifying the birds. I was curious about how other more experienced birders – especially women – feel about birding alone, and whether they worry about personal safety. So I emailed a few of Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s most proficient women birders, and posted the question on our Facebook page.

I quickly realized there are a variety of issues around birding safety, beyond the rape-on-a-secluded-trail that had been on my mind:

• Natural hazards – poison oak, mountain lions, rattlesnakes etc.
• Optics issues – carrying $2000 worth of cameras, scopes etc. can make birders a robbery target.
• Getting to birding sites, particularly if you need to take public transit through high-crime areas.

I received a variety of responses. Some women feel that birding is no riskier than daily life in a big city. Marissa Ortega-Welch, who helps run our Eco-Education program, wrote:

I am conscious of being a young woman and generally live my life trying to always be vigilant and aware of my surroundings and present an air of confidence…. I don’t give any more thought to my personal safety while birding than I do during any other activity in my life. I do bird and hike alone, and while occasionally my irrational fears will get the better of me and make me feel nervous, I remind myself that statistically I am actually much safer in the middle of the woods than in the city and certainly safer than being in a car.

But a couple of Facebook respondents said that safety concerns do affect their birding — in frustrating ways. One wrote:

As a woman, i am often concerned about my personal safety. If alone, I try to stay on traveled trails. Unfortunately, I never feel totally relaxed. And to be perfectly honest, it p—es me off!