This is the first in an occasional series of reviews of Bay Area birding locations. Do you have a favorite site you’d like to share? Email id*****@********************ce.org. 

By David Anderson

My first impression of Upper Tennessee Hollow was an unfinished project. The plant growth seemed low, much of it very fresh, stakes still de-marking plant lines. Then, as I walked further along the El Polin Spring, the centerpiece and focal point, I heard the distinct mcWEEdeer call of an Olive-sided Flycatcher, followed by a Red-tailed Hawk’s shrill cry, a cacophony of finch calls, Violet-green Swallows overhead, and an Ash-throated Flycatcher(!) perched on the west slope. Oh boy, oh boy, this was a place for the birds.

Situated at the southern end of MacArthur Avenue in San Francisco’s Presidio, the El Polin Spring and the Upper Tennessee Hollow have recently been restored. However, it turns
out half the growth is quite mature, and the flanking Monterey pine and redwood groves are long settled. The year-round spring and the varied habitat make it a bird magnet. The archaeological excavations (from a Spanish/Mexican settlement there in the early 1800s) and ample graphics complement nicely as an added point of interest.

Boardwalk and benches at El Polin Spring / Photo by David Anderson

The Presidio Trust went to great lengths to capture the spring as a feature, creating slightly sunken spillways across the path – which the birds use continually for bathing – and creating a series of small ponds with weirs flowing into one another through wetlands. A Great Blue Heron has adopted the uppermost pond, though a Snowy Egret shared it recently. California Towhees, Black Phoebes, American Robins, White-crowned and Song Sparrows, Bushtits, and hummingbirds (Anna’s and Allen’s) all were in abundance.

Cedar Waxwings at El Polin Spring / Photo by Dominik Mosur

On the early June day I visited, fledgling House Finches were lined up in the sun, two Lesser Goldfinch youngsters came to the spring, and a Hairy Woodpecker brought three small, fluffy young to a small oak right by the trail. I had to say “awww!”

Reconstructed watercourse at El Polin Spring / Photo by David Anderson

The upper bowl is partial grasslands, and the Lesser Goldfinches, American Goldfinches, House Finches, and several weeks ago a pair (or trio?) of Lazuli Buntings enjoyed the grasses and seeds.

Pine Siskin at El Polin Spring / Photo by Dominik Mosur

The woods and fringe attract Pygmy Nuthatches, flycatchers and woodpeckers, Western Bluebirds, American Crows, Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Hutton’s Vireos and more.…

By Ilana DeBare

In a dozen years of leading nature trips in Honduras, not once has Robert Gallardo run into another birding group in the field.

“There are just so many areas to go running around here,” he said. “Honduras could hold many groups at one time and they’d never cross paths.”

Gallardo should know. A co-founder of the Honduras Ornithological Society, he has personally added 30 species to the list of Honduran birds and is writing the definitive Field Guide to the Birds of Honduras, to be published in 2014.

Next Thursday August 16, he’ll be sharing his stories and photos of Honduran birds with Bay Area residents at Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s monthly Speaker Series in Berkeley.

The best-kept secret about Honduras, Gallardo says, is that despite years of news about political turmoil in Central America, it is actually quite safe to bird there. Plus the country has an extensive but under-utilized reserve system that doesn’t yet draw the crowds found in places like Costa Rica.

One such reserve includes the Rio Platano — an area of virgin rain forest that is accessible only by raft and is home to tapirs, Great Green Macaws, Scarlet Macaws, monkeys and jaguars.

Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve / Photo by Robert Gallardo

Gallardo first came to Honduras in 1993 as a Peace Corp volunteer. He fell in love with the landscapes, flora and fauna and the opportunity to make a real difference in local avian knowledge and birding. Since then, he’s started butterfly farms and a small eco-lodge, and led numerous birding trips including two sponsored by GGBA in 2011.

Ocellated Qual / Photo by Robert Gallardo

His own favorite bird? The wren family. There are 18 species of wren in Honduras, and sometimes you can find five species living in the same area.

Of the thirty bird species Gallardo has added to the country’s list, three have been wrens.

In-between writing the field guide, conducting eco-tours and speaking to groups like Golden Gate Bird Alliance, he is working on finding a fourth.

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Join us for Robert Gallardo’s slides and presentation on Thursday August 16th.

Birds of Honduras presentation:

 

Date:   Thursday August 16

Time:   7 p.m. refreshments

              7:30 presentation

Place:  Northbrae Community Center

              941 The Alameda (between Marin & Solano) – Berkeley

Cost:   Free for GGBA members, $5 for non-members 

 

 

 …

By Bob Lewis

Grebes have some of the most spectacular courtship displays of any bird, and to top it off, they are doting parents, carrying their young aboard their backs as they explore their marshy habitats.  There are seven species of grebes in North America, and we are lucky to have four breeding near us in northern California, providing great birding and photographic experiences.

My first grebe event this year was with a Pied-billed Grebe family in Sierra Valley.  A pair had built their floating nest in a small ephemeral pond near the road, and had successfully hatched a group of young.  Normally these birds lay about six eggs, and there appeared to be six striped young competing for space aboard mom.

The youngsters are, at first, feathery puffballs unable to dive, due to the air entrained in their down, so the parents fish up crayfish and insect nymphs to feed them.

Adult Pied-billed Grebe with six chicks in Sierra Valley / Photo by Bob Lewis

They carefully hand a morsel to the chick, which then usually drops it into the water and stares at the parent.  The parent patiently dives down and fetches it back up, and the process repeats until the chick finally figures out how to swallow the delicacy.  At the first hint of danger, the young hop aboard one of the parents, who cover them with their wings.  Both parents build the nest, incubate the eggs, and raise the young.

Species two was a surprise for me, a pair of Eared Grebes at Hayward Shoreline, in brackish water in a marshy area with channels running through it.  Eared Grebes generally have three eggs. This pair had two fuzzy chicks, which they were feeding as fast as they could — diving, bringing up small pond creatures, and stuffing them in the chick about every 5–10 seconds.

Two Eared Grebe chicks with adult, one hitchhiking / Photo by Bob Lewis

The Alameda County Breeding Bird Atlas notes that the third nesting record of this species in the county occurred in 1999. Since that time, nesting increased dramatically at Hayward Marsh, and in July 2005 there were over 200 Eared Grebes present. The size of the colony has fluctuated in recent years.  Although these birds are colonial nesters, I only saw one pair.

I was too late to see the courtship displays of the Eared Grebe, which include a variety of behaviors named by ornithologists as the Cat Posture, Bouncy Dive, Ghostly Penguin, Penguin Dance and Habit-Preening. …

By Ilana DeBare

Is Peet’s Coffee about to merge with a corporate raptor-killer?

When German holding company Joh. A. Benckiser announced plans on July 23 to purchase Berkeley-based Peet’s, it was more than your run-of-the-mill corporate merger.

Benckiser is a significant (10 percent) shareholder in Reckitt-Benckiser, manufacturer of anticoagulant rat poisons that are a leading threat to raptors and other rodent-eating wildlife.

Reckitt-Benckiser sells d-Con, the most widely distributed rat poison on the market. It has resisted efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take anticoagulant poisons off the market, and sued the EPA when asked to come up with a less toxic alternative by 2011.

Brodifacoum, the lethal ingredient in d-Con, sometimes kills rodents right away but other times builds up in their bodies – with a deadly result for predators such as hawks, owls, foxes and bobcats.

“Brodifacoum is not metabolized by the liver and stays in high concentrations in the body,” said Michael Fry, former coordinator of the American Bird Conservancy’s pesticide program, in a San Francisco Chronicle story in May, “The rat goes back, eats a second dose, and the stuff builds up in its tissues. It can accumulate an eight-to-tenfold lethal dose. Any large animal that eats that rat dies. It doesn’t take a huge amount of dead rat to kill an animal 10 times its size.”

Predators that eat poisoned rodents die a particularly gruesome death. The anticoagulant basically causes them to bleed to death internally — blood oozing from their beak, ears, nostrils. Earlier this year, a mate of Pale Male – the famous Red-Tailed Hawk of Central Park – was found dead with rat poison in her system. The California Department of Fish and Game has documented 284 cases of anticoagulant poisoning since 1993, including 37 raptors and 50 endangered San Joaquin kit foxes.

New York bird lovers set up this memorial to Lima, Pale Male's mate, after she was killed by rat poison. / Photo by Jean Shum

And it’s not just wildlife that face potential harm from these poisons. According to the EPA, more than 25,000 children under the age of six showed poisoning symptoms after exposure to rodenticides between 1999 and 2003.

Last year conservationists – including GGBA Development Director Lisa Owens Viani and Golden Gate Raptor Observatory Director Allen Fish – started a group called Raptors Are The Solution to persuade people to stop using and selling the anticoagulants.…

By Marissa Ortega-Welch

This month we ran the first-ever Golden Gate Bird Alliance “Wildlife Discoverers” summer camp for children. As I sit here going through all the photos from our week, I am struck by what a truly amazing time it was.

We really couldn’t have asked for a better group of campers. The kids ranged in age from six to ten and came from all over the East Bay and from all walks of life – some were there on scholarship thanks to generous donations from Audubon members, and some were there from private schools. But what they all had in common was a profound interest in exploring, up close and personal, the natural world.

GGBA Education Director Anthony DeCicco and I had armed ourselves with an arsenal of activities, games, and stories in anticipation of what we thought would be the inherent squirrelly nature of the average eight-year-old. But from the very first morning, it became clear that all these activities would not be necessary.

Climbing trees / Photo by Anthony DeCicco

Our first day began at Arrowhead Marsh, where we handed out “field journals” to all the campers for use throughout the week taking notes and drawing the species we saw. Before we could even get to our first activity, a Great Blue Heron flew into the grass near us and some of the campers wanted to look at it through the scope. Meanwhile, a cotton-tailed rabbit ran into the bushes and some other campers wanted to identify the species. California ground squirrels were popping up all around us. Before I knew it, all of the youth were sitting on the ground, capturing what we’d seen in words and pictures in their field journal. And it wasn’t even ten a.m. on the first day.

The same thing happened on the day of our big hike in Joaquin Miller Park. We met at the ranger station and — equipped with binoculars, our bug catchers, field guides and lots of water — we hiked up the Big Trees Trail to the redwood forest. It was a hot day but the shade of the descendents of some of the oldest trees in California kept us cool. Again, Anthony and I were ready with a whole list of activities, but right after lunch the kids instinctively started turning over logs and looking for decomposers, and suddenly we knew that our afternoon wouldn’t go quite as planned.…