Blog Posts Archive - Page 19 of 137 - Golden Gate Bird Alliance

Oakland CBC: From Fog to UFO’s

By Ryan Nakano and Viviana Wolinsky

The fog is thick. The air, brisk. A small group of “early birders” strike out before the sun has time to show its face. It’s barely 5 a.m., and Dave Quady shines his flashlight after sensing a movement in the trees at the end of a side street near Claremont Canyon. At the edge of the beam, a Western Screech-Owl, the first bird seen and documented for this year’s Oakland Christmas Bird Count. Even before the Western Screech-Owl sighting, the group heard Great Horned Owls shortly after 4 a.m., softly calling as the birders emptied out of their vehicles near signpost 28.

“We listened to them for a while and went a bit further down Claremont Avenue, not wishing to attract smaller owls into the bigger owls’ neighborhood because they might be preyed upon,” Quady reminisced. “That’s when I saw the Western Screech-Owl and it was very, very satisfying.”

Fog amongst the trees at Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserce on the day of the Oakland CBC.

Fog amongst the trees at Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve on the day of the Oakland CBC by Patrick Coughlin

The day, as early and as gloomy as it was, was off to a great start.

As time went on, the sun eventually broke through the fog and more and more groups of birders gathered and dispersed, splitting off into smaller groups to cover 30 areas within the 15-mile diameter Oakland count circle. Two-hundred and sixty participants organized into teams via the impassioned work of Oakland CBC co-compilers Viviana Wolinsky and Dawn Lemoine. Eighty-seven of these birders were participating in the Oakland CBC for the very first time and 44 participants were beginning birders [or quite new to birding].

Utilizing eBird, the online tool that tracks bird sightings worldwide, for the first time in the Oakland CBC history as the main form of documentation, the groups submitted their bird observations tallying a preliminary number of 184 different species seen on December 19, 2021.

Black Turnstone at Albany Bulb on Oakland CBC by Alan Krakauer

Out of all these species, one was designated the “Best Bird” of the count. Its claim to fame rests primarily on its very first sighting on the day of the Oakland count, a count with records that date back to 1938.

Seen by the Emeryville Crescent group, over 45 Black Skimmers, tern-like birds with strikingly large red and black underbite bills, were spotted at Radio Beach area with peeps, ducks, gulls, and terns.…

The whole family in the nest; Richmond, Rosie, Sage, Poppy and Lupine by SF Bay Osprey Cam

SF Bay Ospreys 2021 Season

By Osprey Cam Video Assistant

Comparing our past five seasons of Osprey cam footage, I’d have to say the 2021 season was one of the best for our SF Bay Osprey family. Three healthy juveniles were successfully launched into the world while the infamous Ospreys we know as Rosie and Richmond, worked together seamlessly and devotedly from beginning to end.

It all began on a beautiful afternoon in mid-February. The winds were soft, the air clear, when an Osprey landed lightly on the nest. Someone in the live chat noted the arrival. Would it be another floater? Richmond? The camera zoomed in. A surprised yet triumphant cry, “It’s Rosie!”. It was her earliest return yet recorded, and the joy of her successful return raised everyone’s spirits after a long, pandemic-shrouded winter.

Rosie the Osprey returns to the nest by SF Bay Osprey Cam

Rosie returns to the nest by SF Bay Osprey Cam

Despite Rosie’s early return, Richmond was remarkably absent. Days passed, and while Rosie was frequently seen around the nest area, she was always alone. Did Richmond even realize she was back? In years past he had appeared within minutes or at most hours of Rosie’s return (see all of Rosie’s arrivals and departures over the years). Finally, a full week after her return, both Rosie and Richmond appeared at the nest together. The season could finally begin.

Rosie and Richmond on the nest by SF Bay Osprey Cam

After a few weeks spent rebuilding the nest and getting reacquainted, Rosie laid her first egg March 24, about a week early from previous seasons. Seventy-one hours later came the second egg, and 73 hours after that, on March 30, the final egg was laid.

If you haven’t followed the Osprey cam for long, one thing you need to know is that Richmond absolutely loves being a dad. He and Rosie vie for the chance to sit on the eggs, and occasionally Richmond will even position himself right next to Rosie to “help”.

Rosie and Richmond coincubate eggs by SF Bay Osprey Cam

Fishing and Banding and Surprises, Oh My!

Right on schedule, the first egg hatched May 3. One of the musically inclined Live Chatters, craigor, put the first bobblehead to music. By May 5th, Rosie and Richmond had three healthy Osprey chicks to feed. Richmond, who had been bringing 12-15 fish per week during incubation, started ramping up his deliveries, and just a few weeks later was bringing 25-30 fish per week, many of them trout from the San Pablo Reservoir 7 miles away. …

Field Guide piece titled California Scrub Jay

Field Guide: An Artist’s Approach to Avian Taxonomy

By Christopher Reiger

In March 2020, I was excited. After 15 years of full and part-time jobs in administration and communications, I was finally in my studio five days a week and our two young boys were both in daycare programs. Creatively, I was cranking. In addition to a number of in-progress illustration and design jobs, I’d just completed studies for eight new works on paper. On social media, I shared a photo of my studio wall covered with freshly-pressed sheets of watercolor paper; the caption read, “Those blank sheets? They won’t be blank for long.”

Overnight, though, the pandemic made me a stay-at-home dad. Because the boys were so young (4 and 2 at the pandemic’s start), it was challenging, but, like parents everywhere, I made do. Yard exploration and reading were our go-to sanity-saving activities. Outside, we flipped fieldstones in search of ring-necked snakes and arboreal or California slender salamanders, and we watched California scrub-jays, bushtits, oak titmice, acorn woodpeckers, and many other local bird species work through the valley and coast live oaks. Inside, we embraced twice-daily epic story blocks, reading The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, the Narnia Chronicles, the Harry Potter series, Wind In The Willows, The Jungle Books, and more. By the time the boys were asleep at day’s end, I was beat; my only working window was 8 p.m. to midnight, but “dadding” exhaustion made it difficult for me to take on many illustration/design gigs, and my art practice was completely fallow.

Still, bleary though it was, my mind needed a creative outlet. In the days’ interstitial spaces, I started turning over an unrealized idea I’d jotted down in a sketchbook years ago – “create bird species paint chips.” There was a germ of something exciting there, but what?

Acorn Woodpecker in the “bird species paint chip” project Field Guide.

Then came the summer of 2020. As our society wrestled with racial injustice, past and present, I found myself thinking a lot about how we humans classify and catalog life. The social implications of our evolved human impulse to categorize are generally grim (see: human history), but that same proclivity allows us to better appreciate evolution and the relationship between species, subspecies, and ecotypes. As a natural history nerd, I value taxonomy’s utility, but I’m also enamored of its flux and ever-provisional nature. I decided that the “paint chip” idea must be realized as a project that playfully celebrates and critiques the necessarily imperfect science of taxonomy.…

Not for beginners only: Two new birding books

By Ilana DeBare

There are birding books that are great for beginners, and then there are birding books that are great for beginners AND.

The past several months saw publication of two unique bird guides that will charm experienced birders as well as novices—especially those of us living in the Bay Area. These are Birds of Lake Merritt, by Alex Harris, and Neighborhood Birding 101 by Seymore Gulls.

Birds of Lake Merritt

Birds of Lake Merritt (Heyday Press, $25) continues the format of Birds of Berkeley, which was also published by Berkeley-based Heyday Press three years ago. Written and illustrated by Alex Harris, this slender volume features simple yet striking watercolors of 15 local bird species and a page of description about each one.

It also offers a detailed history of Lake Merritt’s development from a tidal estuary and the country’s first publicly-designated wildlife refuge to its current status as—in Outdoor Afro founder Rue Mapp’s words—”nature’s heartbeat in Oakland.”

Birds of Lake Merritt by Alex Harris

Harris’ path to creating this book was not direct. He started out trying to teach himself hawk ID by painting raptors. But painting hawks from photos didn’t prepare him for actual field identification. “It turns out that you mostly see hawks from beneath, hundreds of feet away, a blurred silhouette circling in the skies above,” wrote Harris, who lives in Oakland. “I decided I should look a little closer to home, so I rode my bike over to the bird sanctuary at Lake Merritt.”

Harris includes natural history tidbits such as Green Herons using breadcrumbs and insects as lures to attract the fish they’re hunting, and the fact that Canvasbacks were once so plentiful here that a Spanish map from 1775 refers to “forests of the red duck.” He also includes observations by some well-known local birders including Golden Gate Bird Alliance youth educator Clay Anderson, former GGBA Executive Director Cindy Margulis, and “How to Do Nothing” author Jenny Odell.

Canvasback page from Birds of Lake Merritt

This book is no substitute for a comprehensive field guide. But its illustrations will bring a smile to birders on days when it’s too rainy to venture out in the field. (Let’s hope we have more of those days this winter!)

And it’s a great, eye-opening gift for non-birder Oakland residents who enjoy walking, jogging, or picnicking alongside the lake.

Neighborhood Birding 101: An Identification Guide to Washington, Oregon, and Northern California’s Most Common Neighborhood Birds

Don’t ask me if Seymore Gulls is really this writer’s name.…

Chaetura Swifts: From trees to chimneys

By Rusty Scalf

Even a passing acquaintance with the natural world reveals that species exist on a continuum from Specialist to Generalist—from species that require a very particular habitat to those that can survive in a variety of places. Both have their strengths but the vulnerabilities of the specialist are easily seen. What happens to the specialist when their special habitat is impacted? Obviously, it becomes “adapt or perish.”

Vaux’s Swifts (Chaetura vauxi) and Chimney Swifts (Chaetura pelagica)—both of which evolved to rely on hollow trees for nesting and roosting—are a case in point. What happens when humans destroy old growth forests and remove hollow trees and snags? These swifts have adapted to a different vertical, tubular structure, the chimney: residential chimneys for nesting, and large, pre-World War II industrial chimneys for migratory roosting. Why pre-World War II? Because the older chimneys are often made of concrete or brick with rough inner walls where birds can grasp and hang, while modern industrial chimneys are either metal or ceramic lined. So the chimneys used by swifts are antique, with all the scarcity and fragility this implies.

Swifts at McNear Brickyard in September by Michael Helm

Here in the Bay Area, Vaux’s Swifts have been using the tall chimneys at McNear Brickyard in San Rafael as a staging site during fall migration for many years; possibly since these were decommissioned in 1962. Conversion from trees to human structures happened in a dramatic and complete way for the eastern Chimney Swift well more than a century ago. Now the western Vaux’s Swift is undergoing that same process.

The switch seems complete for migratory roost sites—so complete that the birds appear to be imprinted* on these big chimneys for migratory staging. Meanwhile, the conversion is well under way for nesting as well. Pacific Northwest towns commonly see Vaux’s Swifts nesting in chimneys. Here, at the extreme southern end of their breeding range, residential chimney nesting is happening in places like Sebastopol, Santa Rosa, and Napa Valley.

Chimney entry during mid-September peak migration is a sight difficult to describe. It’s just incredible to see thousands of birds pouring into a 100-foot-tall chimney, sometimes at rates of 10 to 15 per second. It’s equally amazing to witness their extensive aerial displays, or murmurations, prior to going in. These displays can last half an hour near sunset. They end when some unknown trigger causes birds to begin pouring into the chimney, often after several apparent “feints” or false starts.…