By Jack Dumbacher

(Note: Jack will present slides and describe his expedition to Papua New Guinea on July 19 at our monthly Speaker Series in San Francisco.)

In fall of 2011, I led an expedition to some of the most remote islands off the southeastern tip of New Guinea.  The primary purpose of the expedition: To survey the birds on these islands, and collect samples that could be used to study the pathogens that they carry.

Milne Bay Province, where we worked, has over 600 islands.  Each represents an independent evolutionary experiment,  where birds and other critters arrive by wind and ocean current.  Some survive and some don’t.  Once isolated, they begin to evolve with the other species that also survived and form their own unique island ecosystem.  (And by the way, each one is quite beautiful and photogenic too.)

Our first task was to survey the birds on as many different island groups as we could visit in a two month period.  We birdwatched, recorded calls and set up nets to catch birds.  We surveyed local villagers and visited their hunting grounds.  We tried to take the pulse and assess the health of the bird populations there.

Ginetu Islands is a small uninhabited island near Woodlark. It boasted a breeding pair of White-bellied Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) and many Island Imperial Pigeons (Ducula pistronaria). / Photo by Jack Dumbacher

Our second task was to collect samples for studying bird diseases.  Birds can carry a variety of tiny “bugs,” including blood-borne malaria species, viruses and other parasites.  We mostly sampled blood and took oral and fecal swabs, and brought these back to be screened by virus and malaria experts at U.C. San Francisco and San Francisco State University.  By studying many small islands, each with different birds and different diseases, we hope to understand how the diseases are transported from island to island and how they affect avian health.

But mostly, it was a great adventure.  To get to these places, we traveled with an amazing French couple who built their own sailboat, we visited traditional island villages where people still build and sail outrigger sailing canoes, we ate local food, and we saw and handled most of the species that are resident breeders on the islands.

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Jack Dumbacher, a board member of Golden Gate Bird Alliance, is Chair of the Department of Ornithology and Mammalogy at California Academy of Sciences. …

By Anthony DeCicco

With the school year ending, it was time for me to write up the annual summary of Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s Eco-Education Program, in which we lead kids and families from twelve low-income elementary schools in discovering nature and wildlife.

The past year included 50 weekday field trips to local wetland and riparian habitats, over ten family trips to Muir Beach and Alcatraz, and 30 expeditions surveying living organisms in schoolyards. As I catalogued the outcomes, I found myself stumbling over the phrase “notable discoveries.”

“Notable to whom?” I wondered.  To the eco-adults reading the report, or to our urban students out in the field for the first and perhaps only time all year?

If the latter, then “notable discoveries” would surely include the burnt-orange breast of an American Robin… the mohawk atop a Stellar’s Jay… a jackpot of scurrying shorecrabs as kids turned over a mudflat rock…  a two-inch Jerusalem cricket (aka Niña de la Tierra) crawling across the path… or a newly hatched Western Gull.

Eco-Ed class viewing cormorants on Alcatraz / Photo by Anthony DeCicco

And what about my own personal epiphanies for the year, the moments when I yelled in excitement either to the kids or to myself?

Those included:

• Seed shrimp swimming in the vernal pools near the abandoned parking lot of Merritt College in Oakland.

• Bright orange scuds (freshwater amphipods) at the headwaters of Islais Creek in Glen Canyon.

• 2×2 inch, paper-thin flatworms undulating along the underside of a rock along the Point Pinole Shoreline.

• A lone Wilson’s Phalarope that landed near me in the waters at Pier 94 and began to forage so elegantly. (YES!)

Other thrilling moments shared by both adults and students were when a burrowing owl and an American crow engaged in an aerial battle above Paul Revere Elementary in Bernal Heights…  when a damselfly along Islais Creek emerged from its nymph-shaped exoskeleton…  and when we collected a mystery species of gunnel fish from under a rock along the tides at Pier 94 and mistakenly screamed “eel!” as we watched its body wriggle in our container.

Then what about the time on an Alcatraz family trip when I was passionately proclaiming to a participating father the fascinating traits of a Brandt’s Cormorant – its streamlined swim-friendly body, its ability to dive 100 feet when fishing, its bright blue throat for courtship display?

Eco-Ed students with soaproot, a native plant used by Native Americans as a fish poison, an antiseptic and a glue / Photo by Anthony DeCicco

No reaction.…

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. …

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.…