• Audubon California Advocacy Day Goes Virtual

    By Maureen Lahiff 

     

    Traditionally, California Advocacy Day has been an in-person event that takes place in Sacramento, California. In a good year, you’ll find a dozen or so GGBA members participating. The day’s activities vary and include briefings with Audubon California staff. Mike Lynes, who is the policy director for Audubon California, had previously served GGBA as Conservation Director, General Counsel and Executive Director.  Participants also met with their assembly members and Senators, as well as with other California Audubon staff members. Conversations over lunch with members of other Audubon chapters were a highlight of the day.

    In 2019, about 75 Audubon supporters participated in Advocacy Day. This year’s advocacy day took place on June 2nd. One of the highlights was the virtual interactions with with California legislators. Online preparation sessions and advocacy meetings were by Zoom meetings hosted by Audubon California staff members. Most participants reported this online adventure as a good experience. This year, over 350 people registered! That’s quite a jump from 75 attendees. Although I haven’t seen metrics, I strongly suspect that Audubon members from a much wider geographic range were able to participate because of the accessibility of this online format.

    So now that you have a little background on Advocacy Day, here’s more information on specific events, followed by some action items you can take with you to expand and promote your own outreach on behalf on the birds we love.

    Advocacy Day went online this year! Advocacy Day 2020 bird photo by Harry Collins.

    The Prep Webinar Series

    Pedro Hernández, Audubon California’s Outreach and Engagement Manager for Climate Policies, coordinated a series of four prep webinars in May. Two of the webinars focused on issues related to talking with elected legislators or their staff members, as well as specific issues to be addressed during the actual Advocacy Day. The other two webinars focused on environmental issues in the Central Valley and along California’s coast.

    I attended all four of these webinars.  Although there was some repetition, I really enjoyed the series and felt I learned a lot. I’d recommend tuning into prep webinars.

    2020 Advocacy Day Priorities

    Every year, Audubon Californias’ policy team selects a few key themes and bills. The focus shifted a bit this May, as the magnitude of the state budget situation became clearer.

    AB 3030 by Assembly member Ash Kalra of San José makes a commitment to protect 30% of California’s lands and water by 2030.…

  • Reflecting on #BlackBirdersWeek

    By Melissa Ramos

     

    Have you heard of #BlackBirdersWeek? This social media event took place last week and was a response to the racist treatment Black birder Christian Cooper encountered while birding in New York City. #BlackBirdersWeek inspired an avalanche of support for birders for color across the country. This online event highlighted, and made visible, the incredible, often invisible work Black birders are doing for environmental conservation and birding.

    As GGBA’s Communications Manager, it was my pleasure to highlight the events of #BlackBirdersWeek through our organization’s social media platforms. I was heartened to see the positive responses, too. I am still, however, having trouble managing my tornado of feelings on the current state of racial injustice in this country. I feel flummoxed, enraged, depressed. I know I am coming up short of the words I’d like to better express myself, but here is what I know: real, positive, lasting change can come from all of us.

    I also know this: we can start this change with birding. The outdoors, nature, and birds are a respite and a safe place for many of us. Everyone should have an opportunity to participate safely in the wonder of birds. The reality is, not everyone has this opportunity. Although I am a person of color myself, I am not Black; I am not policed, followed, harassed, questioned, verbally or emotionally or physically attacked, or dehumanized because of my skin color. I certainly have never experienced these horrible things while birding or in my daily life.

    The dangers Black Americans face just by virtue of existing cannot be understated. That is why I felt hope and joy at #BlackBirdersWeek for highlighting these very real dangers and the realities that Black birders experience. Seeing Black birders elevate and celebrate each other is a rare thing to behold. I encourage everyone to check out National Audubon’s archive of the #BlackBirdersWeek event if you’d like to learn more about this powerful event. Perhaps the tide is finally turning toward a new era of positivity and inclusivity.

    Birding should be for everyone. But it isn’t yet. We can, however, work together to ensure birding becomes a haven for each person who wants to experience the joy of nature.

    I am happy GGBA is a community that stands up for civil and social justice; a community that is actively working on acquiring funds to invite economically disadvantaged birders of color into our family; a community that is addressing and fighting against environmental racism through our Strategic Plan; a community that has, for years, put children of color at the forefront of learning with our award winning Eco-Education program, and has more recently, provided free educational activities for children at home (in both English and Spanish).…

  • Tex Buss: Bird Artist

    Editor’s Note: Tex Buss is one of many talented artists whose work is featured in Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s first-ever online bird art auction, which runs from May 17 through June 1, 2020. We hope you will support Tex, all of our artists, and GGBA by purchasing their beautiful work.

     

    By Ilana DeBare

     

    For Tex Buss, the silver lining behind the dark cloud of Covid-19 is that she’s had more time to paint birds.

    Buss, a 48-year-old artist from San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, straddles the worlds of tattoo art and traditional fine arts such as painting.

    Buss is a co-owner of Authentic Tattoo on Church Street, which had to shut down with the pandemic’s shelter-in-place rules. Stuck at home, she’s spent her days home-schooling her six-year-old daughter and strategizing for how to eventually reopen the shop safely. But at night, after her daughter’s in bed, she has time to focus on bird paintings.

    Tex Buss at work

    “That’s the bright spot in all this,” she said.

    Buss is among the 22 artists featured in Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s first Online Bird Art Auction, which runs through June 1, 2020 at goldengateauaubon.org/auction.

    She is a third-generation birder: Her grandmother and parents were enthusiastic birdwatchers.

    “I grew up with birdwatching,” she said. “I took a break from it for a decade and half, then came back in my 30s.”

    Raised in Texas, Buss travelled the world, came to San Francisco in 1995 for a temporary “pit stop,” and ended up staying. Legally named Laura, she took on the nickname Tex when she was one of four Lauras working at the Lucky 13 bar on Market Street.

    She was a tattoo artist before becoming a painter.

    Tattoo by Tex Buss of a Steller’s Jay Some of Tex Buss’s birds are imaginary creations, like this one.

    “I got my first tattoo as a teenager when I was a punk rocker,” she said. “I felt a lot of the arts were elitist and closed off to everyday people. Tattooing was every-person kind of work, at least back then. It was also something you can do for a living. It’s very visceral, satisfying, and energizing on a human level, since you get a lot of direct contact with people.”

    Since starting as a tattoo artist 26 years ago, Buss has done literally thousands of bird tattoos. She takes pride in understanding bird anatomy and movement.…

  • Clay Anderson: Bird Artist

    Editor’s Note: Clay Anderson is one of many talented artists whose work is featured in Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s first-ever online bird art auction, which runs from May 17 through June 1, 2020. We hope you will support Clay, all our artists, and GGBA by purchasing their beautiful work!

     

    By Ilana DeBare

     

    Golden Gate Bird Alliance members who know Clay Anderson probably know him as an environmental educator—kneeling to show kids a lizard, or helping them train binoculars on a soaring hawk.

    But Anderson—manager of GGBA’s Eco-Education program, which serves public elementary schools in low-income sections of San Francisco, Oakland, and Richmond—is also a talented nature artist.

    In fact, nature study and art have been intertwined for Anderson as long as he can remember.

    “My mother kept a piece of my art from kindergarten—a picture of all these different kinds of plants,” he recalled recently. “I can’t tell you which came first. It [nature observation and art] has always been together in a package.”

    Clay Anderson works on a chalk-art drawing of a Black-crowned Night-Heron, part of a Golden Gate Bird Alliance campaign to protect Oakland’s herons. By Ilana DeBare

    Anderson grew up on the south side of Chicago, a suburban area that was “pretty close to rural” where he and his six siblings could roam freely in tall grass prairie between the scattered houses. His mother introduced him to birds. His Aunt Rosie bought him the first of many aquariums.

    “I was probably five to eight years old and was totally blown away that you could look inside water and see fish,” he said. “That’s when I started focusing on animals. I didn’t have birds, but I had all the fish I could afford, plus frogs, a turtle, spiders—at one point we even had a crocodile—any kind of thing you could put in an aquarium. I had about five or ten aquariums in our basement.”

    While accumulating aquariums, Anderson was also drawing. Some of that came from his mother, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate who worked as an illustrator for the Chicago Defender, the prominent African-American newspaper. Anderson drew plants and animals, cars, imaginary monsters, anything he could.

    “In fifth grade, I remember kids stealing my drawings,” he said. “I was kind of upset but then someone told me to take the perspective that they were doing it because it was really good stuff.…

  • Daryl Goldman: Bird Artist

    Editor’s Note: Daryl Goldman is one of many talented artists whose work is featured in Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s first-ever online bird art auction, which runs from May 17 through June 1, 2020. We hope you will support Daryl, all of our artists, and GGBA by purchasing their beautiful work.

    By Ilana DeBare

    Daryl Goldman’s creation of mixed media art boxes began long, long before her love of birds.

    “I come from a very creative family and art has always been part of my life,” Goldman said. “As a child, I made more than my share of dioramas for school projects. As an adult, I was drawn to the art boxes of Joseph Cornell and the personal altars of Frieda Kahlo.”

    Goldman, an Oakland resident, was a psychologist in private practice for 33 years. She turned to creating art boxes as a way to process her own feelings after a day of seeing clients.

    Pileated Scrabble by Daryl Goldman, one of her two mixed-media works for sale in the auction

    “I found it helpful to make a three-dimensional representation of themes my patients were struggling with, such as having hope, or how to take care of your own needs and care about the environment too,” she said.

    In 2010, after years of trying, her wife Jeanette Nichols finally managed to hook Goldman on birdwatching with a trip to the Central Valley to see Sandhill Cranes taking flight.

    “I’d resisted it for 12 years but something clicked and my brain has never been the same,” Goldman said.

    As she got more and more engaged with birding—including taking Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s year-long Master Birder class in 2016—Goldman started incorporating bird themes into her artwork.

    “When my passion and/or obsession with birding took over my brain, more birds made their way into my art,” she said.  “My current work, which I call ‘Birds with Words,’ was inspired by my wife’s relationship with Scrabble. (I call Scrabble her ‘other wife.’)”

    One of her two works in the Golden Gate Bird Alliance auction is a Scrabble-based mixed-media piece. She uses vintage 1950s wooden Scrabble tiles to spell out bird-related words, and juxtaposes those words with images of birds from old field guides.

    “Words, birds, redundancy [of images and words], and humor—I couldn’t be happier,” she said.

    Goldman’s other work in the auction is a diorama with a light-hearted take on eBird rare bird postings that will hit home with many birders.…