• Birdathon 2021: Soaring success

    By Ilana DeBare

    If Birdathon 2021 were a film, we’d say “it’s a wrap!”

    Instead we’ll say, “it’s a rap-tor!”

    Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s annual fundraiser came to a high-flying conclusion over the weekend, capping two months of innovative new events designed to carry on despite Covid.

    Unable to hold our usual in-person Birdathon programs, our creative volunteers came up with three alternatives: a series of ten Virtual Field Trips via Zoom, a socially distanced Christmas-in-May Bird Count, and an online Birdathon Adventure Auction. They culminated with a Birdathon Virtual Celebration on Sunday night.

    These new events were highly successful in all respects—number of participants, quality of the experiences, and funds raised. Here’s a flyover raptor’s-eye view of them all.

    White-tailed Kite during the Oakland Christmas-in-May Bird Count, by Mark RauzonWhite-tailed Kite during the Oakland Christmas-in-May Bird Count, by Mark Rauzon

    Virtual Field Trips

    We sponsored ten Zoom “trips” that ranged from viewing Sage-Grouse in Lassen County to a pelagic journey to the Farallones. Over 400 people signed up and attended an average of two trips each. We raised $13,200, or more than $1,000 per trip.

    Bonus: Video recordings of all the Virtual Field Trips are available, so you can watch any that you missed! View descriptions of the trips here. Then call our office at (510) 843-2222 to provide credit card payment of $15 per trip and get the link to the recording. The best time to call is on Mondays through Thursdays, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

    Christmas-in-May Bird Count

    Over 140 people signed up for counts in Oakland and San Francisco that coincided with eBird’s Global Big Day on Saturday, May 8th. We managed to cover most of our regular Christmas Bird Count areas, and enjoyed sightings of breeding birds as well as balmy temperatures that aren’t available in December. Oakland count participants got to try out some new features—paperless reporting, using only eBird, plus new digital maps—that will prove useful in future Christmas Bird Counts.

    Bird counting at Oakland ZooChristmas-in-May Count at the Oakland Zoo / Photo courtesy of Mark Rauzon Barn Owl during Christmas-in-May Bird Count by David Assmann

    Registration fees generated a total of $3,260; one generous member covered fees for people who found them a challenge. Special thanks to count compilers Dawn Lemoine and Viviana Wolinsky (Oakland) and David Assmann and Siobhan Ruck (San Francisco) for creating this successful new event from scratch.

    Birdathon Adventure Auction

    The online auction, which closed Sunday night, brought in more than $15,000 for Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s conservation and education programs!…

  • Good news on Snowy Plover habitat Copy

    By Mike Lynes

    This week the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service designated 24,527 acres along the Pacific Coast as critical habitat for endangered Western Snowy Plovers — an important step towards ensuring the species’ recovery and ultimate survival.

    The FWS action ends several years of legal conflict over how much land would be designated as critical habitat for the plovers, and doubles the acreage initially proposed in 2005.

    While the FWS didn’t include any habitat along the San Francisco coastline, its action will benefit the Snowy Plovers that over-winter at Ocean Beach and Crissy Field by protecting their breeding grounds along the Pacific Coast.

    The Snowy Plover — a six-inch shorebird weighing up to two ounces — was first listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1993. Its major nesting sites had dropped from more than 50 to fewer than 30. Today, approximately 2,500 plovers remain breeding along the Pacific Coast.

    This week’s action by the FWS is aimed at protecting sufficient habitat to improve the plovers’ reproductive success and ultimately remove them from the threatened and endangered species list.  The new rule designates 47 sites in California, nine in Oregon and four in Washington. It doesn’t affect land ownership or create any refuges, but alerts federal agencies to take the plovers into consideration when planning or funding activities involving its designated habitat areas.

    The benefits of this ruling go beyond Western Snowy Plovers. Habitat set aside for plovers also benefits other shorebirds such as Godwits, Long-billed Curlews, and Western and Least Sandpipers.

    The new critical habitat designation is actually a revision of prior efforts.  The Western Snowy Plover was first granted 19,474 acres of critical habitat in 1999. In 2005 the Bush administration illegally reduced the critical habitat to 12,145 acres, eliminating protection for thousands of acres scientists believed necessary for the snowy plover’s survival and abandoning key habitat areas crucial for recovery.

    In 2008 the Center for Biological Diversity sued over the unlawful reduction of the plover’s habitat protections, leading to a settlement agreement with the Service and this week’s revised designation. Those of us who love Snowy Plovers and want to see their population survive owe a debt of thanks to the Center for pressing this issue.

    There will certainly be critics of this habitat designation:  It has the capacity to affect other recreational users along some stretches of the Pacific coastline.  But we hope that these areas can, where appropriate, be managed for multiple uses in a way that accommodates reasonable use of the beaches while protecting the Snowy Plover.…

  • Secret Jewel along Tomales Bay

    By Ilana DeBare

    Bay Area birdwatchers have long flocked to Audubon Canyon Ranch’s flagship Martin Griffin preserve along Bolinas Lagoon, which for years hosted dozens of egret nests.

    But almost no local birders have set foot on another ACR property—its dramatic Toms Point preserve on the northern edge of Tomales Bay.

    Toms Point is a 70-acre promontory near the mouth of the bay with striking views of Point Reyes and the largest intact dune ecosystem in this part of California. Protected by ACR since 1985, it’s normally off-limits to the public.

    Now—through our online Birdathon Adventure Auction—Golden Gate Bird Alliance is offering an extremely rare guided tour of Toms Point led by the site’s former steward, Dan Gluesenkamp.

    View of Toms PointView of Toms Point / Photo by Dan Gluesenkamp

    “Toms Point is a magical landscape, a promontory where cold Pacific winds meet the soil of North America, where ocean currents mix with the rich waters of Tomales Bay,” said Gluesenkamp, who spent a decade in the early 2000s as Director of Habitat Protection and Restoration for Audubon Canyon Ranch “You have the diversity of intact habitats, the feeling of the wind, the magic of the location…. Anyone who visits will understand how special this place is.”

    Reaching Toms Point requires exiting Highway 1 for a dirt road and passing through a private cattle ranch and multiple locked gates. The last gate opens onto ungrazed land—primeval scrub land blasted by sea winds.

    The site contains a surprisingly large number of distinct habitats, from coastal sand dunes with rare dune annuals, to salt marsh and grasslands. The San Andreas Fault crosses the property, with each side holding a different ecosystem. The eastern side of the fault  is sandstone with invasive grasses; the western side is unconsolidated marine sediments that support California native grasses.

    “It’s a Disneyland of different habitat types,” Gluesenkamp said. “Like stepping from Tomorrowland into Frontierland, you can step from one habitat to another.”

    Aerial view of Toms PointAerial view of Toms Point showing various habitats—dunes, marsh, grasslands / Courtesy of Dan Gluesenkamp Dune plants at Toms PointEphemeral dune wildflowers, including Cammasonia and rare Gilia Coastal scrub habitat at Tom's PointCoastal scrub habitat at Tom’s Point / Photo by Dan Gluesenkamp

    There are no structures on Toms Point, not even a toolshed or restroom. Its open grasslands often bring sightings of Grasshopper Sparrow, White-tailed Kite, Northern Harrier, and Western Meadowlark, while the Tomales Bay shoreline offers loons, grebes, cormorants, and Baird’s and Pectoral Sandpipers.

    Gluesenkamp’s personal expertise is plants—he’s the former Executive Director of California Native Plant Society, and currently the executive director of the California Institute for Biodiversity—and he easily identifies native wildflowers such as popcorn flower (Plagiobothrys) and beach starwort (Stellaria littoralis). …

  • Creation of a felted Osprey chick

    By Hilary Powers

    Bid high for the baby Osprey in the Birdathon auction – you may never see another!

    When Golden Gate Bird Alliance called for donations of services or experiences (not stuff) to fit this year’s theme, I had to stop and think, because stuff is what I do: true-life replicas of creatures natural or imaginary, captured in wool and beeswax and steel.

    Felted creatures1: A few felted friends. Photo by Hilary Powers

    So how about a choose-your-own baby bird? That’d be an experience, I wrote, and we could set the prize to track the winning bid, starting with a duckling and offering bigger (or more) birds the higher the bidding went. As long as the winner selected a nestling at the downy stage, I figured all choices would be equal. More fool I….

    Why specify a baby? Adult birds have feathers. And feathers are living miracles. With my skills and goals, long feathers are insanely difficult to get right. But I’d spent countless hours editing with nestcams on a second screen, and I’d already built a duckling, an owlet, a few eyases, and even a California Condor. So I (thought I) knew: baby bird = fluffy coat, likely all or mostly one color, probably white = something wool would do easily.

    After pouncing on the idea, the GGBA folks came back and asked if I could make an Osprey for them instead, as that would fit in with their live Osprey nest cam along the Richmond shoreline. Sure, sez I, choose-your-own was just a way for stuff to masquerade as experience.

    Then I started looking at Osprey nestling pics. Oops. Unlike falcons and owls and hawks and eagles and condors, baby Ospreys are never white and fluffy. Ospreys hatch as little dinosaurs and stay saurian until their body plumage comes in, along with all those lovely, complex flight feathers.

    But yes had been said, and a challenge has its own delights.

    Work started March 12 with research: collecting dozens of images (many from Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s webcam videos) and reading up on development. When do pinfeathers start? Way too soon. What’s the eye color? Depends on the day; blue at first but turning blood red after “a few days” (how many, nobody says). What’s the length, beak to tail? Again, depends on the day; happily I found a pic where someone had set a ruler inside a nest of chicks about the right age.…

  • Accessible birding for every body

    By Chris Okon

    When I started birding in 2005, I went on each and every Golden Gate Bird Alliance bird walk that I could: the rolling terrain of Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, the meadows of Yosemite, the wild hills of the Sierras, the special patches in Golden Gate Park, any opportunity to see and learn about birds from some of the best birders in the area.

    But gradually my body started to switch gears, and after experiencing more and more unexplained, painful, and humiliating falls, I finally got the answer in 2012 when I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). I still loved birding, but when I tried to act as if everything was OK by taking part in group birding trips and Christmas Bird Counts, I soon felt like a burden to myself and others and realized that I couldn’t keep up. Frustrated and sad, I stopped joining group outings. I believe these feelings are shared by many people who have limitations with not only mobility but also vision, hearing, autism, and many “invisible” health conditions.

    Sibley trailAn inviting trail in Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve. But further along will it hold roadblocks for birders with mobility challenges? Photo by Emily Wheeler.

    Now there’s a community for such birders: Birdability, an organization dedicated to inclusion of people who face challenges of mobility, vision, neurodiversity, and other issues that keep them from birding.

    Founded in 2016 by Virginia Rose, who lost her ability to walk after an accident at age 14, and co-led by occupational therapist and avid birder Freya McGregor, Birdability partnered with National Audubon and has already accomplished a lot:

    • Birdability Map: A crowd-sourced tool that lets anyone document and view accessibility features of birding locations.
    • Guidance Documents: Action-oriented explanations about access considerations, how organizations can implement accessible and inclusive birding, a glossary of inclusive language terms, a template to advocate for change, and more.
    • Birdability Captains: An invitation to all to get involved throughout North America.
    • Guest Speakers: Available to present to Audubon chapters, bird clubs, nature organizations and disability groups on accessibility, inclusivity and the joys of birding.
    • Coverage in birding publications and media such as Birdwatching magazine, ABA’s Birding magazine and more.
    • Birdability Week: First celebrated in October 2020, it helps spread the word about birders with disabilities and health conditions, and shares resources to help improve accessibility and inclusivity in the birding community.
    …