Great Egret

Egret nests in Alameda, 2020

Editor’s Note: It’s nesting season! Photographer Gerry Traucht has been following a nesting colony of Great and Snowy Egrets in Alameda for eight years, through the removal of their dying nest tree in 2018 and their shift to new trees in 2019. About a dozen Great Egrets have arrived so far this spring. As we wait for more to begin nesting, here are Gerry’s photos and observations from 2020. 

By Gerry Traucht

The 2020 egret colony in Alameda flashed small numbers in a big footprint, taking over a grove of trees like it did in 2019.  There were about 18 nests, each with at least two chicks, sometimes three, and one that seemed to have four. By early June they were at their height of activity and by the end of that month, only a couple of visible active nests remained. In July they left, a very early departure.  What stood out was not so much their smaller number, but their strong visual presence that spoke in stirring imagery.

Great EgretThis Great Egret was one of the first arrivals on March 19, 2020 / Photo by Gerry Traucht

For decades, Alameda’s iconic solo Monterey pine nesting tree overflowed with egrets. The tree finished its life span and was cut down following the 2018 nesting season. There is now a bald space at the lagoon’s edge where the old tree once stood. The new colony is in a grove, essentially in the same spot, but set back from the water. It was always a question as to whether the egrets would return after their favorite tree hanging over the lagoon was no longer there.

Great Egrets often arrive in early March and Snowy Egrets a couple of weeks later. If the colony is large, they may arrive in a stream over several months, sometimes as late as June.

From spring through summer, green pine branches flower with newborn egrets in clusters of white. Parents with large, magnificent wingspans come and go, repairing nests and bringing food to the newborn. As they grow, this sanctuary resounds with hungry chicks in rhythmic, danceable clatter. The clamor of newborn egrets grows wildly louder as they mature. As the colony grows, it develops the feel of a village.

Great Egret profile viewA silent moment of beauty on March 19, 2020. Photo by Gerry Traucht. A view from mid-April 2020. Photo by Gerry Traucht. Great Egret with branchGreat Egret returns to its mate with a branch to repair or possibly expand the nest, on April 18, 2020.…
Outdoor Educations Institute at Arrowhead Marsh

Sharing birds with tomorrow’s outdoor educators

By Analicia Hawkins and Aryn Maitland

Throughout the past year, opportunities to connect with the birding community in person and enjoy nature together have been few and far between. Even though birding alone can be a fulfilling experience, there’s something special about being able to share that experience with others—especially with people who may be birding for the first time.

Earlier this year, Golden Gate Bird Alliance members and staff led a day of birding and exploration for a group of young outdoor educators—an all-womxn cohort from the Outdoor Educators Institute (OEI), a program of Youth Outside.

OEI is a year-long program that supports young adults by providing immersive and culturally relevant training, development, and leadership opportunities. The program is designed to support participants in advancing their careers as educators in a way that centers under-represented groups working in the industry through inclusion and representation. As queer birders who rarely see other queer birders in a structured setting, it filled us with joy and hope to be in the company of such bright, passionate, and engaged birders, many of whom shared similar identities and experiences.

Outdoor Educators Institute and Golden Gate Bird Alliance volunteers at Elsie Roemer Bird SanctuaryOutdoor Educators Institute participants and Golden Gate Bird Alliance volunteers at Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary / Photo by Dan Roth

Members of the GGBA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee planned a day-long excursion that led participants through two local wetland bird habitats. We began our day at the Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary in Alameda as the tide began to retreat, offering us excellent glimpses of various plover species, American Coots, terns, and more! Participants gathered on the viewing platform and, with the support of GGBA members, gained basic comfort and familiarity using binoculars—some for the very first time—and learned how to use various field guides. The enthusiasm from the group was infectious (COVID pun only slightly intended).

Afterward, we made the short drive to Arrowhead Marsh at MLK Jr. Regional Shoreline in Oakland. As we began our walk, members of the group stopped to appreciate an Anna’s Hummingbird perched on a fence showing off the striking colors of its gorget in the sun.

“I would have just thought that was just a regular bird on a fence if I were walking by, but it’s actually beautiful!” one of the participants remarked.

Anna’s Hummingbird By Bob Gunderson Outdoor Educations Institute at Arrowhead MarshOutdoor Educators Institute participants at Arrowhead Marsh / Photo by Ilana DeBare

A few steps later we looked up just in time to see a Northern Harrier gliding above the marsh, even pausing for a moment.…

Brushfoot butterflies

Butterflies on Mount Sutro in 2020

Editor’s Note: Liam O’Brien started conducting twice-monthly butterfly surveys on Mount Sutro in 2020 as part of our wildlife monitoring for U.C.S.F.’s new Vegetation Management Plan, which was the subject of our previous blog post.

By Liam O’Brien

Saturday, February 13, 2021 was a glorious day. The sun was perfect, the Castro was full of people on the streets (like the old, pre-Covid days ) and low wind cemented in my mind that I needed to visit the summit of Mount Sutro.

After an arduous hike up, I entered old Nike Road through the dappled sunlight of the eucalyptus forest. It was too early for the Western Tiger butterflies I’d seen here last year. But there dancing above the nasturtiums was a lone Cabbage White (Piers rapae)—a full month earlier than the first one I’d seen here in 2020.

Cabbage White butterflyCabbage White butterfly / Wikipedia

There is an annual contest held by the great butterfly professor Arthur Shapiro in Davis, California. He buys a beer for any of his students who can catch and verify the first Cabbage White of the season. A few days before my Mount Sutro visit, the first one of 2021 had been caught outside Sacramento city limits. This San Francisco sighting was my first butterfly of the new year. Folks dismiss the Cabbage White as one of those “rat” species and a rather generic butterfly. But I think it’s the perfect species to pause on in this write-up on before the flashier ones start to show up in springtime.

I’m going to now shift things to reviewing my 2020 surveys, gleaned from the annual report I turned into Golden Gate Bird Alliance in January.

It’s been wonderful to return to this little Eden month after month. I’ve gotten to watch the seasonality change, with different types of birds and bees passing through and the flowers—so incredibly important to butterflies—going through their life cycles.  Ultimately 2020 revealed 20 species of butterflies that dropped into the summit of Sutro over the course of the year.

When I created the Butterflies of San Francisco pamphlet in 2010 for Nature in the City, I concluded that we had approximately 34 breeding species within our county. This would give Mount Sutro a little less than 2/3 of the known species in town.

The summit of Sutro has a couple of things going for it when it comes to butterfly presence. …

Anna's Hummingbird on Mount Sutro,

Birds and Mount Sutro’s changing forest

By Whitney Grover

“Trees, trees, beautiful trees,” the high-pitched song of the Brown Creeper rings out from a nearby tree trunk. These well-camouflaged little birds creep up the trees, hunting insects in the bark. Brown Creepers don’t breed on San Francisco’s Mount Sutro but they often come around to forage in the spring and fall. I imagine they wish they could change their tune to something less enthusiastic when they come to this hill we call a mountain.

For Brown Creepers, the eucalyptus that dominates the mountain is not their cup of tea. There are far more insects and spiders on the mature old oaks in Golden Gate Park or the big redwoods sprinkled through our parks. On one of my visits to Mount Sutro, a Brown Creeper was navigating the corrugated sides of a shipping container in a parking lot, giving up on the surrounding trees for some easy pickings of spiders.

Brown CreeperBrown Creeper by Bob Lewis

Birds adapt. Many of the traits we find beautiful about birds are also the things that make them able to fill new niches and adapt to strange new environments: flight, charisma, and intelligence. And Mount Sutro is a striking example of a new, transformed environment.

In the late 1880s Adolf Sutro developed the grassland and dune landscape of San Francisco by densely planting some of it with eucalyptus and cypress, with the intention of harvesting it for lumber. Much of it was harvested and later developed, but certain areas like Mount Sutro were left with this tightly packed foreign forest. The now-61 acres were designated an Open Space Reserve by its current owner, U.C. San Francisco, in 1976.

Despite the main forest being non-native, other native understory plants like ferns, elderberry, and poison oak thrive. And because of decades of hard work by groups like the Sutro Stewards and the Rotary Club, the summit area in particular is a paradise full of the native plant species our local birds love.

Native plants in the Rotary Meadow on Mount Sutro,Native wildflowers in the Rotary Meadow on Mount Sutro, by Ildiko Polony Volunteers planting at Mount Sutro's Rotary MeadowSutro Stewards volunteers planting at Rotary Meadow, by Kelly Dodge

In 2018 a new chapter began for the Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve. After many years of planning, UCSF published a 20-year Vegetation Management Plan. Work began by removing the dead and dying trees in target areas of the mountain. UCSF contracted Golden Gate Bird Alliance to perform a bird survey to monitor the impact of the work on bird populations, and starting in 2020, Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) were added to the survey.…

Rachel Lawrence and Alex Henry

Top Guns of Bay Area Birding, 2020

By Michael Stevens

Quite a story unfolded on the eBird Top 100 lists for 2020. After many years with the same excellent birders at the top of the heap, newcomers emerged as Champion Birder of the Year in both San Francisco and Alameda Counties. It seemed remarkable because of the combination it takes to get that sort of lofty year list—time, commitment, skill, and experience. How would not one but two rookies emerge who could compete at that level? The short answer is the obvious one: Both Rachel Lawrence and Alex Henry are fine birders who arrived in the Bay Area, separately, toward the end of 2019.

Rachel, the top San Francisco eBirder, was a parasite immunologist and faculty member at the Royal Veterinary College of The University of London who decided to convert a long-distance relationship to a marriage. When the wedding bells finished chiming, she found herself living in Bernal Heights.

Alex, the top Alameda County eBirder, was a recent University of Michigan graduate who achieved the fondest wish of pretty much every recent grad when he landed a job in the East Bay and a place to crash in Berkeley.

[Editor’s Note: Alex will be presenting a Birdathon Virtual Field Trip on “Finding Rarities in the East Bay” on Wednesday evening, April 21st. Click here for details and sign-up for this Zoom event.]

Let’s hear directly from these two.

Rachel Lawrence and Alex HenryRachel Lawrence and Alex Henry. Photo by Michael Stevens

Q: How about a quick origin story – how did you become a birder?

Alex: That’s easy – I was an eight-year-old living outside of Boston when a pair of Broad-winged Hawks built a nest in some nearby woods. Suddenly there were rodent and songbird scraps all over the neighborhood and I was fascinated. My parents really were supportive and pretty soon I was traveling all over Massachusetts looking at birds.

Rachel: I grew up in Dorset on the south coast of England with parents who were sailors, so we were outdoors with binoculars a lot. I have a story like Alex’s – we were a couple of miles offshore when a Peregrine Falcon exploded onto a Black-headed Gull. It took a few moments to settle it in and then turned around and just headed for shore!

Q: Nice, very “circle of life!” Speaking of apex predators… it’s the end of 2019 and you’re new in town. At what point did you realize you were going to totally go nuts in 2020?…