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.…

By Phil Price

If you love Renaissance-era art, you’ll get even more enjoyment from a trip to Italy than most people will. If you have a passion for French food, then you’ll get more from a trip to Paris than people who just make the usual rounds of Eiffel Tower/Louvre/Notre Dame. Travel is always enriched if it meshes with your interests.

You can’t force it. If you’re not interested in 17th-century church architecture, then stopping in every 17th-century church that you see is going to bore you to tears. And if you’re not interested in birds, then going on bird walks or trying to identify every new bird is going to diminish your vacation, not improve it.

But if you do enjoy birding, congratulations! Your horizons expand to include the whole world.

My wife and I focus most of our vacations on nature and wildlife, and had long discounted Europe as a vacation destination because most of the charismatic megafauna that once roamed the land have either been wiped out or forced into national parks that are tiny by U.S. standards.

But starting in our mid-30s we became increasingly interested in birds, and now, a dozen or so years later, we don’t have to see a grizzly bear or a wolf to count a day as a success when it comes to enjoying nature.  We have been traveling in Europe for almost two months now — the second-longest vacation of my adult life — and keeping an eye and an ear out for birds has enhanced literally every day of our trip.  Birding is one of the most portable pastimes.

Another great thing about birding: People who show up to go on bird walks are our kind of people, and we enjoy meeting them. Like us, they are not spoiled. If they see a family of otters a quarter-mile away, they are thrilled to see them at all, rather than disappointed that they’re not closer.

And of course, every now and then things go your way. We had long wished to see Puffins, and talked of someday chartering a boat to a Maine island to see them. So when we were on the Outer Hebrides of Scotland a week ago, and heard of an uninhabited island called Mingulay that has Puffins and is visited by a tourist boat twice a week, we signed up for a trip right away.

We would have been happy with a handful of Puffins seen at a distance with our binoculars.…

By Ilana DeBare

As both a birder and a Cal alum, I perked up when this press release from U.C. Berkeley came across my desk:

A graduate student recently completed a six-month count of birds on the Cal campus — and found that the number of species today is actually higher than a century ago.

Allison Shultz identified 48 species in an 84-acre portion of the 178-acre central campus. That’s more than the 44 species recorded with similar methodology in 1913-18, and more than the 46 recorded in 1938-39 by none other than a young, not-yet-famous Charles Sibley.

“The presumption going in was that we would see a steady decline in the number of species because the campus, like any urban environment, has been heavily modified, with more buildings and 15 times more students,” said Rauri Bowie, a Cal biology professor who co-authored the study with Shultz. “But despite everything that has happened on campus in the past century, we find absolutely no evidence for that.”

Still, though the total number of species stayed steady, the kinds of birds changed dramatically with changes in the campus landscape.

In 1913, the oak woodlands and shrubby chaparral of Cal were filled with Song Sparrows, White-Crowned Sparrows and Golden-Crowned Sparrows. Wrentits lived in the brush and Western Meadowlarks in the grasslands.

Today, some oaks remain but the tall grasses and chaparral have given way to lawns and ornamental shrubs. And common species include Lesser Goldfinch, Nutall’s Woodpecker, and the Chestnut-Backed Chickadee.

Shultz noted an increase in species that typically do well in human habitats: crows, ravens, hawks, Ring-Billed Gulls and Mourning Doves.

“We found evidence that if you still have a lot of open space, as in the suburbs or on campus, you tend to get community turnover,” Bowie said. “Very sensitive species disappear, but other species come in to fill similar functional roles. You get different seed eaters and different fruit eaters, for example, with no decrease in net diversity.”

Shultz and Bowie published their study in The Condor journal, the same place that Sibley published the survey he did as a Cal grad student in 1938-39.

Bird survey data from 1913 / Photo by Allison Shultz

Their work was unusual in that few researchers from a century ago left notes detailed enough to allow today’s scientists to replicate their work and make comparisons. The 1913 survey was influenced by zoologist Joseph Grinnell, whose method of precise observation and annotation became the basis of much of today’s field biology.…

By Mary Malec

I first heard about the new Bald Eagle nest at Lake Chabot in early March.  There had been a couple of reports of Bald Eagles at the lake, and then one of the rangers was fishing with his son and spotted an eagle carrying nesting material.  Doug Bell, the Wildlife Specialist for the East Bay Regional Park District, was notified and in turn informed the California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The park district had contracted for fire suppression timbering in the area surrounding the nest, and people were concerned that the cutting, grinding and helicopter log removal might disturb the nest. Monitors started watching the nest immediately, noting all noise from timbering, boating, planes and people, and tracking the birds’ response. The timber contractors agreed not to do any fly-overs of the nest, and to stop all activity if the pair seemed bothered.

The female of the pair was a four-year-old, looking like a dirty blond and not very much like an adult Bald Eagle. In fact, there had been a report of a Golden Eagle diving into Lake Chabot and pulling out a fish.  Clearly it was this immature bald female who had been spotted that day.  Everyone doubted that she would be able to nest successfully, and when it was determined the male was about five years old (still young for breeding), it appeared to be even more of a long shot.

Female Bald Eagle at Lake Chabot / Photo by Mary Malec

I was oriented to the site one rainy day in March.  We hiked in to the Observation Point where volunteer monitor Harv Wilson was already at work.  He had brought  his tent and was inside with his scope focused on the nest across the cove.  The O.P. is about 1,000 feet from the nest and it was a challenge to be a nest monitor that day, watching activity so far away while rain dripped off the front flap of the tent.

Area of Bald Eagle nest at Lake Chabot / Photo by Mary Malec

The female was having a difficult time of it during those early weeks.  Either her lack of experience or her immature hormone levels were getting in her way.  She would settle down on the nest but never stay long.  The male would immediately take her place, or he would find her and chase her back to the nest, where again she would sit for a while and then leave. …

By GGBA Staff

We’re delighted to share the news that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has signed an America’s Cup settlement agreement that will provide benefits to Bay Area bird populations, both during the world-famous yachting event and in years to come.

Golden Gate Bird Alliance was among several community groups that appealed the environmental impact report for the 2013 America’s Cup.

We were concerned about impacts to birds, especially birds on the open water of the Bay and the threatened Snowy Plovers at Crissy Field.

Among many other provisions, this settlement will provide $150,000 for a three-year study of the impacts of disturbances to birds on the Bay, including disturbances from boating activities.

The city also agreed to abandon plans for a floating Jumbotron video screen in the waters of Aquatic Park lagoon, which is good news for swimmers and recreational users as well as wildlife in the area.

Meanwhile, in parallel talks, event organizers have promised to cordon off and provide monitors around the Snowy Plover area at Crissy Field, to prevent America’s Cup spectators from disturbing those at-risk birds. Similar steps are being taken at other ecologically sensitive sites.

The Bay Area is a site of international significance for shorebirds and contains many Audubon Important Bird Areas, including the open waters.  Particularly in winter, the Bay draws large populations of feeding and resting birds such as Double-crested Cormorants, Greater and Lesser Scaup, Buffleheads, Surf Scoters, Western Gulls and several kinds of grebes.

These “rafting” birds rely on the Bay to nourish and reenergize them for future migrations and breeding. Yet there’s much less Bay today than there used to be: Ninety percent of its wetlands and forty percent of its surface water have been lost to landfill and development since 1850. The remaining open water is heavily used by boats, which can flush rafting birds from as far away as 100 to 500 meters.

The environmental impact report for the America’s Cup estimated that race events will draw about 1,800 spectator boats carrying 18,000 passengers on the open waters of the Bay. Even more spectators will line the Bay at various viewing sites.

Now, as part of the settlement agreement, the U.S. Geological Survey will conduct studies before, during and after the America’s Cup to determine how boating activity affects bird populations on the Bay. These surveys will provide baseline data to guide future special events involving the Bay, and will help us protect birds from both daily marine traffic and unforeseen disasters like the Cosco Busan oil spill.…