• Birding by Ear with help from AI

    By Margot Bezrutczyk

    I’ll probably never know what it was: the bird that sang such complex, liquid song in the thicket of bay laurel that morning on Bolinas Ridge. I tried and failed to come up with a mnemonic, resorting to simile: “It sounds like an Ewok and a robot fighting. It sounds like a computer drowning.” I climbed up some fallen branches hanging off the trail in an attempt to see the bird, but several crows and a wren joined the chorus and began scolding me. I was brand-new to bird identification, armed only with my field guide and binoculars, birding alone during the pandemic, and eventually I simply had to walk away. I found birding in the woods both exhilarating and frustrating, because it was so difficult for a beginner to even know what to listen for.

    Then I discovered BirdNET.

    BirdNET is a sound ID app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in partnership with Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. I’ve been a bit of an evangelist for BirdNET since I started using it, and I was happy to see that similar artificial-intelligence (AI) technology has recently been integrated into the Merlin app as a “Sound ID” feature.

    Both apps are free, and both work by recording spectrograms of the sounds detected by your phone. The spectrogram—a visual representation of audio frequency and signal strength or “loudness”—is processed through a neural network that returns one or more predictions based on both the spectrogram and your location. A sound may represent multiple bird species, which the app can identify simultaneously.

    You have the option to share your recordings with Cornell’s Macaulay Library, where they’ll be used to improve the quality of IDs in the future. I usually don’t do this because because many of my recordings end with something like, “…it’s just a f*∆king squirrel, again.”

    Shortly after downloading BirdNET, I held up my phone towards the cacophony of an oak woodland one April morning, and finally begin to distinguish signal from noise. The first test: I was able to determine that a certain call I’d been hearing for weeks was the song of a Wrentit, an untrustworthy-looking little grey bird I’d seen in my Sibley book and longed to lay eyes on: It was right here all along!

    With an idea of what to look for, it wasn’t long before I was able to spot the Wrentit and learn its song by heart.…

  • Two weeks on the Farallones

    By Michael Pierson

    I recently had the pleasure of spending two weeks volunteering on the Farallon Islands as part of an invasive plant removal team. I work as a naturalist on a local whale watching boat and have spent many weekends circling the islands, wishing I could set foot on this forbidden place. The many books and articles I’ve read had given me an idea of what it would be like, but the reality was so much more than I imagined.

    View from the Farallon Islands View with nesting gulls from the Farallon Islands by Michael Pierson Marine mammals on the FarallonesMarine mammals on the Farallones by Michael Pierson

    There’s lots of planning: filling out paperwork, rolling sleeping bags, cleaning the camera lens, and completing food order lists. This last task is no easy feat. Trying to determine how many apples, eggs, or slices of cheese you’ll consume in a week is harder than you would think. There’s limited storage, fresh food can go bad, and it all must travel to the island with you because you can’t just run to the store if you forgot to buy milk.

    Flexibility is important because you don’t have a departure date so much as a window. If you’ve done a trip around the islands, you know the weather can be quite mercurial and accessing the islands is dangerous enough in good conditions. Four days before the target departure, we still didn’t know if we would be going. The wind picked up and didn’t seem to be calming any time soon. Finally, forty-eight hours before our anticipated departure, the forecast predicted a break in the wind and e-mails went out: “The trip is a go.”

    The departure day started early, with everyone arriving at the dock by 6 a.m. so we could get there and unload the boat before the wind started again. Supplies and gear were loaded and we passed under the Golden Gate for a bumpy ride to the islands. On the boat were the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service crew that I was part of and researchers from Point Blue Conservation Science, the non-profit organization that conducts most of the research on the island. Several of the researchers got seasick right away; fortunately, my time working on a boat saved me from the same fate.

    I’d traveled this route countless times before, but this felt different. As the islands became visible in the fog and the smell of thousands of pinnipeds and hundreds of thousands of birds began to burn my nostrils, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.…

  • Birds for breakfast

    By Alan Krakauer

    Breakfast cockatooBreakfast cockatoo by Alan Krakauer

    The past year of Covid-19 saw folks change how they relate to nature. Like many of you, my wife and I enjoyed a bit of a silver lining by getting reacquainted with our local wildlife. Attendance in nearby parks soared as people sought freedom and relief in the outdoors. When one can’t get outside to scratch this itch, sometimes biophilia can find a strange and creative outlet. For us, it changed how we have breakfast!

    I present to you: Fruit Art!

    When lockdown began last March, we decided to try eating healthier by making oatmeal every morning. Instead of just throwing some pieces of fruit into the pot, I started decorating the oats to lighten the mood as we grappled with the uncertainty of the pandemic.

    Some of the inspiration came from my father-in-law: We’d laughed out loud at the whimsical mandarin, apple, and banana sections he arranged into faces for breakfast. I also channeled my inner Charley Harper to leverage the simple geometric shapes that a piece of fruit can yield in a few quick cuts. As I became more familiar with this organic ephemeral art medium, I took on the challenge to make animal-inspired designs. Naturally this included a lot of birds. Here’s a selection of our bird-related breakfast art from the past 14 months.

    Northern Cardinal by Alan KrakauerNorthern Cardinal in the style of Charley Harper, by Alan Krakauer

    Some were local species.

    Bewick's Wren in oatmeal by Alan KrakauerBewick’s Wren for breakfast by Alan Krakauer Wild Turkey in oatmeal by Alan KrakauerWild Turkey for breakfast by Alan Krakauer California Quail in oatmealCalifornia Quail by Alan Krakauer Breakfast woodpecker by Alan KrakauerPileated (?) woodpecker by Alan Krakauer

    Some were from farther afield.

    Prairie chicken or sharp-tailed grouse in oatmealPrairie chicken or Sharp-tailed Grouse by Alan Krakauer Breakfast penguin by Alan KrakauerPenguin, definitely in the style of Charley Harper, by Alan Krakauer Ostrich from banans in oatmealOstrich for breakfast by Alan Krakauer

    How many ways can you make an owl?

    Breakfast Barn Owl by Alan KrakauerBreakfast Barn Owl by Alan Krakauer Breakfast owl by Alan KrakauerGreat Horned Owl by Alan Krakauer owl in oatmealAnother Great Horned Owl by Alan Krakauer Breakfast owl by Alan KrakauerYet another Great Horned Owl by Alan Krakauer

    A couple of bonus bowls.

    Breakfast kiwi birdA kiwi, obviously, by Alan Krakauer Birds made of pears in oatmeal“Birbs,” unknown species, by Alan Krakauer

    Curious about our recipe? We use steel-cut oats and typically add apple (whatever isn’t needed for the design), ground cinnamon, and vanilla extract. Any other extra bits of fruit are chopped and added to the bottom of the bowls before we spoon in the cooked oats. Occasionally we add a splash of milk, but no extra salt, sugar, or butter.…

  • Mount Sutro’s Bombardier Butterflies

    By Liam O’Brien

    They blast by incredibly fast, zipping and zagging every which way. No, I’m not talking about the annual visit of the Blue Angels for Fleet Week. I’m talking about our skipper butterflies.  I remember wondering if I’d ever learn them, back when this butterfly mania took hold of me. Years of frustration, mainly because they all look so damn similar and don’t sit still long enough for a novice to study them.  But then one day the clouds parted and I’d cracked their code.

    Once thought of as halfway between butterflies and moths, skippers are impish, entertaining, and maddening, all at once. (How’s that for anthropomorphism?) Now that summer has officially arrived on Mount Sutro, I’m dedicating this blog post to the three most common ones at the summit and in our fair city.

    We have a total of six skipper species scampering about San Francisco County. (Bet you didn’t know that.) They are the Fiery (Hylephila phyleus), the Umber (Poanes melane) and the Common Checkered (Pyrgus communis).  Less common are the seasonal Sandhill (Polites sabuleti), the Woodland (Ochlodes sylvanoides) and the Rural—a population that I discovered breeding out on Yerba Buena Island in 2009.

    Sandhill Skipper butterfly Sandhill Skipper butterfly by Liam O’Brien
    Woodland Skipper butterflyWoodland Skipper butterfly by Liam O’Brien

    Skippers are a family of the order Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) named the Hesperiidae. Being diurnal (day-flying), they are generally called butterflies.  They were previously placed in a separate superfamily, Hesperiodea; however, most recent taxonomy places them in the superfamily Papilionoidea, the superfamily of butterflies, which taxonomically supports their description as butterflies. Did you get all of that?

    The “skipper” name comes from their quick, darting flight habits. Most have antenna tips that are modified into narrow, hook-like projections.  Moreover, skippers mostly lack the wing-coupling structure typical of moths.  More than 3,500 species of skippers are recognized worldwide, with the greatest diversity in the neotropical regions of Central and South America.

    Remember when you a kid and those little golden guys would blast about the family lawn? That was, and still is, the Fiery Skipper.  I was somewhat surprised to see one up on Mount Sutro last season because one would not really consider it habitat.  In San Francisco, it’s much more common on the Great Lawn. But there it was in August 2020, completing a trifecta of the ones we see the most in the city.…

  • Contributing to a Breeding Bird Atlas

    By Brandy Deminna Ford

    Have you ever really looked at a Mourning Dove—its grayish blue crown, pale rosy breast, and shimmering iridescence punctuated by myriad black spots on the wings? Have you paused to notice the slight differences between a male and female pair or listened to a female’s low cooing call from a nest in a hollowed-out tree branch, continuing until a male approaches to replace her on the nest?

    Mourning Dove pairMourning Doves by Sivaprasad R.L.

    Busily birding, we often forget to look up from our species lists to really hear a familiar sound. Or catching a glimpse of a Mourning Dove in our periphery, we might not choose to take a closer look. But contributing to a breeding bird atlas isn’t just birding. It’s the chance to slow down, watch, and listen—and go from aspiring master birder to natural historian hopeful.

    This breeding season, I have circled the Phyllis Ellman Loop Trail near Corte Madera a half dozen times, repeatedly walked along the public shore in Marin’s Paradise Cay, and been a rare visitor to the shoreline at Blackie’s Pasture in Tiburon—and I will be doing this for a little over a month more. It all began at the 2020 San Francisco Christmas Bird Count, when Atlas Coordinator Juan Garcia first introduced me to the idea of participating in the Marin County Breeding Bird Atlas.

    Landscape with trailRing Mountain, in one of Brandy’s Breeding Bird Atlas survey areas. She saw a Vesper Sparrow there in April and a Rufous-crowned Sparrow in May. / Photo by Brandy Deminna Ford

    The main purpose of a breeding bird atlas is to collect data that reflect the geographical distribution of breeding birds in an area. These data provide conservationists and other avian enthusiasts with the information they need to understand how birds interact with the surrounding environment over time and what changes occur to bird populations in specific areas. A bird atlas is much more than a list of species: It typically includes maps and illustrations as well as extensive narrative text.

    This isn’t the first time a breeding bird atlas has been conducted in Marin County. During the breeding seasons of 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1982 organizers Bob Stewart and David Shuford assembled a group of dedicated volunteers to conduct the first bird atlas in western North America. After the initial bird atlas was completed in 1982, its findings were published in the Marin County Breeding Bird Atlas: a Distributional and Natural History of Coastal California Birds by David Shuford, a book that remains influential to this day.…