Birding Lassen in the… snow?

Birding Lassen in the… snow?

By Dan Murphy

As we’ve done for the past 35 years or so, my wife Joan and I recently led a group of birders on the annual Golden Gate Bird Alliance trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  Never been there?  You don’t have to join our trip to enjoy this incredibly unique spot.  The beauty of Manzanita Lake in the morning is out of this world.  Add to that a landscape painted with lakes and streams, meadows and volcanic flats, waterfalls and mountains, volcanoes and glacial remnants, and you’ve got Lassen.

Each year seems to present unique challenges.  Some years it’s a lingering winter.  Other years it’s the pleasure of overcoming the effects of a bit too much wine.  And then there is the challenge of recovering from the self-inflicted treatment deemed necessary to get an ant out of one’s ear. Or the forest fire that seasoned the clear mountain air a few years ago.

Now there is one thing we’ve counted on through all the years of the Lassen trip — the weather.  We’ve never had rain.  We’ve had it the day before the trip.  We’ve had it the day after the trip. But we’ve never had so much as a drop dampen us during the trip.  And snow?  We had it the day after the trip once, but never during the trip.

Hat Lake with beaver dam / Photo by David Anderson

So it’s safe to say this is a fair weather trip.  (Well, except for the year the temperature soared to 112° and everyone bailed out of the Saturday excursion to the Fall River Valley and Burney Falls.  And some folks found the morning chill was a deterrent to birding at 6:30 a.m. the times it froze at Manzanita Lake.)

This year, 25 of us gathered for the big event.  It was really promising because Joan and I spotted a Ferruginous Hawk on Glenburn Road while scouting on Thursday.  How could it not be a great trip after that?

On Friday, we were up early for a walk around Manzanita Lake in the brisk morning air.  Someone said we had 35 species, which is as good as we’ve ever done.  Our midday hike was to Paradise Meadow.  There was a bit of wind and some overcast, so I wore my light cotton shirt – no need for a jacket, was there?  We tried birding Hat Lake, but the wind blew us out of there, so we headed for the 1.4 miles of trial that would take us up 700 feet to Paradise Meadow. …

The eagle or the turkey?

By Ilana DeBare

We all know and love the Bald Eagle, the subject of this remarkable composite photo taken on April 22 at Calaveras Reservoir by Leo Wang.

Photo by Leo Wang - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dayuwang/

But did you know that Benjamin Franklin would have preferred the Wild Turkey as our national bird? Here’s what he wrote in a 1784 letter to his daughter, in response to selection of the eagle as symbol of the Cincinnati of America, a new society of revolutionary war officers:

For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country…

I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

Photo by Bob Lewis - http://www.flickr.com/photos/boblewis/

We respectfully differ with Mr. Franklin on his judgment of Bald Eagles as lazy and immoral, although we admit to liking turkeys too, especially the ones that can be found strutting down the middle of city streets these days in Berkeley and Oakland.

Leo Wang created his image from a series of six photos of an eagle returning to its nest, which he merged in post-production.…

GGBA intern restores habitat – and her career

GGBA intern restores habitat – and her career

By Ilana DeBare

Salt grass? Gumplant? Sticky monkey-flower?

Rachel Spadafore knows them all. And she’s helped scores of Golden Gate Bird Alliance volunteers restore prime bird habitat along the bay by returning these native plants to the San Francisco and East Bay shorelines.

For the past year, Rachel served as GGBA’ first Restoration Coordinator. Her work involved leading teams of volunteers during monthly work days at Pier 94 in San Francisco and Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline Park in Oakland.

Rachel, 29, formed her love of nature as a child in the Alleghany foothills of Pennsylvania. She received a master’s in environmental management at the University of San Francisco, where she was inspired by a professor with expertise in tidal wetlands restoration.

But her career plans hit a brick wall after graduation due to the recession – bad news for Rachel, good news for Golden Gate Bird Alliance.

There were few openings for newly-minted environmental scientists.  Rachel ended up taking a less-than-thrilling office job for a green building company.

Then she found out  that GGBA was looking for a restoration intern, and jumped at the chance to get back into the field, even if it was just a couple of times a month.

The shoreline at Pier 94 / Photo by Lee Karney

“I love being outside,” she said. “It was so refreshing after being in a cube for almost a year. I felt I’d gotten back to who I was and what I enjoyed.”

Rachel’s work centered on two sites – Pier 94 and MLK Shoreline – at which Golden Gate Bird Alliance has been the lead agency in habitat restoration.

On a typical Saturday work day, Rachel would stop by the GGBA office at 7 a.m. to pick up picks, shovels, buckets and birding scopes. She’d arrive at Pier 94 or MLK about 45 minutes before the volunteers – walking the site to assess the progress of recently-planted grasses and shrubs, or deciding which non-native invasive plants should be the focus of that day’s attack.

As the volunteers worked, she’d point out birds and their songs. And when they were done, she’d lead a bird walk to explain how wildlife would benefit from the restored landscape.

Although Rachel had done some birding before the GGBA internship, her personal expertise was in plants. So GGBA Volunteer Coordinator Noreen Weeden helped bring her up to speed on the avocets, clapper rails, osprey and other avian inhabitants.…

Fort Funston Bank Swallows

Fort Funston Bank Swallows

By Dan Murphy

A unique San Francisco treasure is the Bank Swallow colony at Fort Funston.  And just as unique is its current nesting site — a band of rip-rap placed there illegally (oops!) by the San Francisco Department of Public Works.

Let’s start with the basics. This year there are at least 110 nest burrows between the rock revetment (rip-rap) placed on the beach by the Department of Public Works and the crumbling roadbed above.  If you want cute and super hyperactivity, you’ve got to love Bank Swallows. These brown and white swallows with the distinctive black breast band are our smallest members of the swallow clan and among the longest-range migrants.

On my most recent visit in mid-June, there were at least a half-dozen swallow families of four to six birds swarming around the colony.  The young had probably fledged in the early morning and were bidding farewell to the colony before heading all the way to Ecuador or Columbia for the rest of the year.

Can you believe our tiniest swallow migrates all that way?  The first birds arrive on April 1 — yes, it’s predictable — and the last depart by August 1.  Mid-May to mid-June sees the height of activity at the colony.  It’s just non-stop activity.  There must have been insects on the beach because there were often a dozen or more adult birds pecking away there.  They use the beach to get bits of wrack for nesting material early in the season, but this is the first time in over 30 years of observations I’ve seen them apparently feeding on the sand.  The fun never ends with these guys.

Two juvenile Bank Swallows in their burrow at Fort Funston / Photo by Dan Murphy

Bank Swallows have been recorded at Lake Merced since at least the early 1900s.  There was also a colony near Skyline and Sloat that was destroyed when Skyline Blvd. was built.  We don’t have records of when they started nesting at Fort Funston, but it’s safe to say they’ve been there since the 1960s.  In better times they used the bluffs at Fort Funston between their north end and Panama Point, the point you can see to the south from the parking lot.

About four or five years ago, the compacted sand that forms the cliffs at Fort Funston started to slump into loose dune-like sand instead of the old sand cliffs that made for good swallow burrows. …

Good news on Snowy Plover habitat

By Mike Lynes
This week the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service designated 24,527 acres along the Pacific Coast as critical habitat for endangered Western Snowy Plovers — an important step towards ensuring the species’ recovery and ultimate survival.
The FWS action ends several years of legal conflict over how much land would be designated as critical habitat for the plovers, and doubles the acreage initially proposed in 2005.
While the FWS didn’t include any habitat along the San Francisco coastline, its action will benefit the Snowy Plovers that over-winter at Ocean Beach and Crissy Field by protecting their breeding grounds along the Pacific Coast.
The Snowy Plover — a six-inch shorebird weighing up to two ounces — was first listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1993. Its major nesting sites had dropped from more than 50 to fewer than 30. Today, approximately 2,500 plovers remain breeding along the Pacific Coast.
This week’s action by the FWS is aimed at protecting sufficient habitat to improve the plovers’ reproductive success and ultimately remove them from the threatened and endangered species list.  The new rule designates 47 sites in California, nine in Oregon and four in Washington. It doesn’t affect land ownership or create any refuges, but alerts federal agencies to take the plovers into consideration when planning or funding activities involving its designated habitat areas.
The benefits of this ruling go beyond Western Snowy Plovers. Habitat set aside for plovers also benefits other shorebirds such as Godwits, Long-billed Curlews, and Western and Least Sandpipers.
The new critical habitat designation is actually a revision of prior efforts.  The Western Snowy Plover was first granted 19,474 acres of critical habitat in 1999. In 2005 the Bush administration illegally reduced the critical habitat to 12,145 acres, eliminating protection for thousands of acres scientists believed necessary for the snowy plover’s survival and abandoning key habitat areas crucial for recovery.
In 2008 the Center for Biological Diversity sued over the unlawful reduction of the plover’s habitat protections, leading to a settlement agreement with the Service and this week’s revised designation. Those of us who love Snowy Plovers and want to see their population survive owe a debt of thanks to the Center for pressing this issue.
There will certainly be critics of this habitat designation:  It has the capacity to affect other recreational users along some stretches of the Pacific coastline.  But we hope that these areas can, where appropriate, be managed for multiple uses in a way that accommodates reasonable use of the beaches while protecting the Snowy Plover.…