• Bess Petty: Bird Artist

    By Ilana DeBare

    Bess Petty was working for a company that made trade show banners when a friend asked if she had any small creations to include in a new gallery being set up by an artists’ collective.

    Petty, a studio art graduate of U.C. Berkeley, had been sketching birds for fun. “I thought maybe I could make some [wallets] with birds on them, using scrap vinyl material from the place I worked,” she recalled.

    That was in 2008. Since then, those initial scrap-material birds have grown into a menagerie of 83 different bird images that Petty sells on magnets, pins, notecards, coasters, stickers, pillows, and wallets.

    One of those birds—a singing Western Meadowlark—is at the center of Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s Birdathon 2022 logo, which Petty designed pro bono.

    Birdathon 2022 logoDesigned by Bess Petty

    Bird Versus Bird, Petty’s business, enjoys a five-star review on Etsy, where she currently does about half her sales. She also sells through gift shops at nature centers across the country. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, she sold her work in person at crafts fairs and other events, including some past GGBA Birdathon Awards Celebrations.

    “My favorite type of order is from organizations and nature centers,” she said. “It’s supporting me but also supporting their conservation and education efforts.”

    Six shorebird magnetsShorebird magnets by Bird Vs Bird

    Petty’s love of drawing started as a child, when it was one of her favorite pastimes. Her love of birds took root early too.

    “I grew up in Davis, where my family would go on nature walks on campus or hiking in the Sierra,”said Perry, who is now 43 with her own seven-year-old son. “We always had a bird book around to see who came to our feeder.”

    Petty “fell into” graphic design as a student when, working at a textbook store, she was asked to create their newspaper ads and window displays. After college, she got a job at Fastsigns, an Oakland company that makes marketing materials for trade shows—the source of those  initial vinyl scraps that she made into wallets.

    Her initial bird creations proved so popular and so fun to make that she decided to open an Etsy store. “Etsy was still very small and very craftsy back then,” she said. “You could have terrible photos and people would still buy stuff. I feel lucky to have gotten in on the ground floor.”

    Petty bought a tabletop machine to make pins and magnets, a manual device that can turn out 100 pins an hour, and which she still uses today.…

  • Richmond Christmas Bird Count Takes Its Maiden Voyage

    By Karyn Noel

    It’s dark o’clock on the first sunday of 2022.  I make coffee, pack my lunch, grab my bins and head toward my car to participate in the first-ever Richmond Christmas Bird Count.  As a co-compiler, the joyful anticipation of this day has been building for months.

    Ouch! It’s flippin’ freezing outside. No kidding – my birdbath is frozen solid, so I set my coffee cup on it and take a picture before de-icing my car.  Luckily I’m on time to meet the group I’m supposed to lead in Hercules in the area around Sycamore Pond, Duck Pond, Frog Pond, and the Refugio Creek marshes surrounded by a young ~20 year old neighborhood adjacent to the San Pablo Bay.

    Counters on the San Pablo Bay by Bruce MastCounters on the San Pablo Bay by Bruce Mast

    The counters in my group are all amazed by how rich and productive the habitat is, (I say how “birdy”), in the middle of a planned community neighborhood. Hercules, of course, was named after one of the five dynamite factories that lined the shoreline at the turn of the last century.

    Like the other 180 volunteer counters, we scoured all likely habitat and counted every bird we saw and/or heard. Counters included experts and novices.  My favorite bird on my portion of the count was a pair of American White Pelicans spiraling up, up and over into another count area.

    It was fun to hear the chatter across the group, such as whether or not it was okay to use recordings to flush a reluctant but known-to-the-area bird. The universe answered when the Green Heron we considered tricking, squawked and flushed without artificial prompt. Whew! Didn’t have to call the birding police in on that one!

    With over 39 groups covering 19 different areas within the 15-mile diameter count circle, this was just a snippet of what it was like to be out that day.

    Looking at the map, I’d say around 30% of the Richmond Christmas Bird Count footprint was on the Bay. In terms of sheer volume, of the 172 species reported and 48,677 individual birds seen, waterbirds made up more than 20% of the total with 6,386 scaups (greater, lesser & G/L) taking the top number followed by 3,733 Double-crested Cormorants.  Special props to Bruce Mast for recruiting volunteer boat captain, Rich Holden.  Thank you Bruce and Rich!

    Double-crested cormorant by Bruce MastPelagic Cormorants by Bruce Mast

    As far as surprises go during the count;  Sam Zuckerman spotted four Tundra Swans at Dotson Marsh on December 30, giving an auspicious start to the count week.…

  • Being a Bird Ambassador

    By Margaret Hetherwick 

    Donna Hayes, Audubon member and resident birder of San Francisco’s Bernal Heights district, remembers seeing the glowing face of inspiration when a guest to her office noticed his first bird. 

    Hayes was a counselor at a city college at the time and was meeting with a student who had brought along their young son. There was a bird feeder outside her window — nothing special, said Hayes, just a regular backyard mix. As the two spoke, the meeting was beginning to drag for the youngest attendee.

    “He was sitting there, deathly bored, and a male House Finch came to the birdfeeder,” said Hayes. “The little boy jumped up and exclaimed, ‘Look at that! What is that! It’s so beautiful!’ “I would have given my birdfeeder to him right then.”

    House Finch at Coyote Hills by Rick Lewis House Finch at Coyote Hills by Rick Lewis

    This is the crucial moment at which a bird enthusiast becomes a bird ambassador. 

    Hayes stopped the meeting to tell the boy about the finch as well as show him pictures of other local birds in the area. For the rest of the meeting, he pointed out every visitor to the feeder with fascination. As Hayes waved goodbye, she knew she had been part of a really special moment.

    “Maybe after that one incident, I’ve wondered if that ignited something in him. I wish I could know. It was quite something.” said Hayes. 

    This interaction, while minute in size and innocuous in nature for an experienced birder like Donna Hayes, made all the difference to the child — he was struck by the natural world, and with Hayes’ guidance, forged a connection to his environment. By reinforcing his curiosity and sharing her own knowledge with enthusiasm, Hayes became, spontaneously in that moment, an ambassador for the world of birds. 

    This role is not exclusive to the world of birding; when one takes on a hobby, it is a given that their interest in that subject will be greater than that of a layperson. One can expect to find themselves fielding questions about their hobby when making small talk. Being a bird ambassador goes beyond sharing details about one’s interests; it is acting as a liaison between the technical and scientific world of bird observation and the inquisitive mind at hand.

    Molly Hetherwick and intern at the Younger Lagoon Banding Station, talking about molt tracks on a Golden-crowned SparrowAn intern and I (Molly Hetherwick) at the Younger Lagoon Banding Station, talking about molt tracks on a Golden-crowned Sparrow

    Derek Heins, renowned birder in the East Bay and chapter board member of Golden Gate Bird Alliance since June, has observed an uptick in engagement by the general public.…

  • 2021 SF Christmas Bird Count Report

    By David Assmann 

    San Francisco birders have been lucky – for the past fifteen years, there has been no rain on the Christmas Bird Count, and conditions have been mostly sunny, with a rare bit of fog. The December 28, 2021 count, however, was cold and cloudy, with light rain at various points throughout the day.

    The weather, while reducing visibility and bird activity, did not deter 136 enthusiastic volunteers from making this one of the better Christmas Bird Counts. Participants ended up tallying more than 64,000 birds by the time the count ended – down only slightly from last year’s total on a sunny day, and well above our 10 year average.

    SF CBC counter Nancy Palmer at San Francisco Watershed by Noreen Weeden

    We completed our transition to modernizing the count by reporting and compiling all data through eBird, including the documentation for rare birds. eBird’s new Trip Report feature made it much easier to consolidate information and share it with area leaders. 273 eBird checklists were submitted, an increase over last year.

    By the time Count Week was over, the species tally was at least 187, and may reach 188 if the Mexican Duck, the rarest bird spotted on the count, is accepted. Illustrating the trickiness of bird identification, there is disagreement about whether or not this bird is a pure Mexican Duck, or if it also has Mallard genes.  This determination will likely be made by the California Records Bird Committee, since this sighting is going to be submitted for review. 

    Mexican Duck  by David Assmann

    There were 28 rare species found, with nine of the eighteen areas finding a rare species. Six of the rare species were found during Count Week, but not on Count Day. New to the San Francisco Count were the Mexican Duck in Colma, and a White-winged Dove found during Count Week on Washington Street in a backyard. A Prairie Warbler found near Colma Creek in South San Francisco marked the first sighting of this species during the count since 1993.

    Overall duck numbers were similar to prior years, but there was a lot of variation by species. There were only two Green-winged Teal spotted, down from 58 last year, and we missed Cinnamon Teal and Eurasian Wigeon altogether. Scaup numbers, however, were up from last year’s 611 to 1,069 this year (still well below historical numbers). We did set two count records for duck species, with eight Common Mergansers and 62 Red-breasted Mergansers.…

  • 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.…