Blog Posts Archive - Page 4 of 137 - Golden Gate Bird Alliance

Birding the Bay Islands: Bair Island’s Tidal Food Court Copy

by Helen J. Doyle and Jeanette Pettibone

Bair Island’s restored tidal wetlands provide a variety of food found in high tide waters and low tide exposed mudflats for both year-round residents and thousands of birds migrating through or overwintering in the Bay Area.

Located just east of Highway 101 near Redwood City, Bair Island is part of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, an impressive multi-agency effort to restore the South Bay’s natural wetlands. Bair Island’s primary habitat is tidal wetlands, dominated by salt marsh-loving plants like pickleweed and gumplant, bounded on the landward side by shrubland. Twice a day the exposed mudflats serve up abundant food for a variety of shorebirds, waterbirds, gulls and terns. Shorebirds are especially cooperative and fun to watch in such an exposed and expansive landscape. They move slowly as they use their bills to forage in the mud, their long legs keeping their bodies above the water. A terrific time to watch the Bair Island food court is on ebb tide, with the birds descending on the freshly exposed mudflats as the tide goes out. This is a great place to bring a scope, if you have one.

Like Mare Island further north in the San Pablo Bay, Bair Island may not have always been an island like it is today. As elsewhere in the San Francisco and San Pablo Bays, the shoreline has been molded and shaped to serve agricultural and industrial uses. In the 1920s, cattle were raised here by Fred Bair, for whom the island was named. Subsequently, they were part of the complex of salt evaporation ponds along the Bay shoreline. In the 1970s and 1980s, housing developments were proposed for Bair Island until local conservation efforts succeeded in protecting it and ultimately incorporating it into the extensive Don Edwards Refuge. Now the approximately 3,000 acres of Bair Island is part of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, converting just over 15,000 acres of industrial salt ponds back to tidal wetlands and other habitats. This and other efforts to restore native habitat and prepare for sea level rise were recently funded through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law announced in March by US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, and Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency.

Marbled Godwits search for food in mud exposed by the ebbing tide by Helen Doyle

On our first outing to Bair Island, a calm late January morning between winter storms, we neglected to coordinate with the tides.…

Birding: a Real Option for City Kids

By Dan Scali

As an immature iteration of a long-standing committee, Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s Youth Education Committee hatched in September 2022 and continues program development for new audiences, most notably middle school students. One pilot program finding early success is the committee’s collaboration with San Francisco-based youth organization, Real Options for City Kids (R.O.C.K.). R.O.C.K. has been providing out of school programming to historically underserved K–8 youth in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood since 1994. Within R.O.C.K. is a perfect audience for our outreach, the Saturday Adventure Leadership Team (S.A.L.T.). This team is exclusively for middle schoolers who are held to high expectations in their commitment to each other, staff, environmental stewardship, and exposure to new outdoor experiences.

Our committee was excited for this partnership and despite concerns that volunteers might shy away from teens full of testosterone, interest was very high. With an important goal of promoting social and environmental justice, we were glad to sign on several Spanish speakers and others with relatable backgrounds as the R.O.C.K. youth to volunteer.

Getting the hang of the scope. Photo by Natalie Gustin Toland

We kicked things off with S.A.L.T. at Heron’s Head Park in September of last year. Though we were about a month too early for wintering ducks, the park’s varied habitats: bay, pond, beach, rocky shore, tidal marshes, channels, and sloughs, were likely to provide excellent opportunities for newer birders to see large aquatic species up close. One hurdle was that S.A.L.T. turnout is unpredictable — families have a lot going on — and waking up early on the weekend to go bird watching is maybe not at the top of the list for most 12 to 14-year-olds. Nevertheless, three co-leaders, Clay Anderson, Bianca Escalante, and myself, were ready to flow with the outgoing tides. Six boys arrived with staff members Franny, a graduate of S.A.L.T., and Cassandra, ready for an adventure. We distributed brand-new, recently donated 10×42 Vortex binoculars to all, made introductions, and headed out.

The Heron’s Head Crew. Photo by Dan Scali

Our first invasive plant, star thistle, and our first native plant, Oregon gum plant, were much easier to observe than our first bird. And yet, the tiny Least Sandpiper was plenty confiding and gave all of the beginners great looks at its bright yellow legs. Moving on we found many opportunities to discuss bird ID, behavior, life history, and to connect with the ecology around us.…

Birding the Bay Islands: Thriving in Angel Island’s diverse habitats

By Helen J. Doyle and Evan Weissman

We met at 6:30, as we agreed the night before. The sky was already light, a week before the summer solstice, though a layer of ocean fog gave everything a slightly hazy outline and dulled gray tone. June gloom. Summer on the San Francisco Bay. We parked where the road had been washed out by winter storms, listening for birds in the light morning breeze.

We passed through oak woodlands and coastal scrub/chaparral habitats. Further along, a small grove of coast redwoods, planted a hundred years ago or more. All these habitats on a small island in the San Francisco Bay. We took a few steps, stopped and listened again, peering into the scrub for a flash of color or motion in the muted light. We heard one, two, three birds, several different species, on one side of the trail and then the other. Quietly, patiently, we listened.

Angel Island has at least seven distinct habitats for its avian life, packed into one square mile: oak woodland, coastal scrub/chaparral, introduced Eucalyptus and Monterey Pine, a small Redwood grove, shoreline, and of course the surrounding bay waters and sky above. For those new to birding, the Island offers the chance to see a diversity of birds on easy walks through varied habitats (don’t forget to bird from the ferry!).

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Acorn Woodpecker by Evan Weissman

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Acorn Woodpeckers thrive with their well-stocked granaries by Helen Doyle

Angel Island may delight experienced birders too. While none of these habitats are unique to the island, the type and number of birds differs from what you might see elsewhere. The oaks appear to support more Acorn Woodpecker families than a similarly sized woodland would elsewhere, perhaps because the birds are not competing with squirrels, who don’t live on Angel island. There are no California Towhees, common in the Bay Area, but there may be more Spotted Towhees than expected, perhaps due to reduced competition from their California Towhee relatives.…

Hope: A Lesson from the Birds

By Jess Beebe

Pine Siskin by Elizabeth Winstead

Birds are wonderful ambassadors for the beauty of the world. As a member of the GGBA community, you are already charmed by the grace of flight, the miracle of migration, the curiosity in an avian eye. Yet, as with any great love, once we fall for birds, our hearts can be troubled and even broken. We hear how climate change and habitat loss are harming birds, and we feel a deep distress that we are losing something we love and are powerless to help. To protect ourselves, our psyche may throw a blanket of numbness over the anxiety, grief, or anger we feel. We focus on everyday tasks and ignore the rumble of unease.

The truth behind the fog of protective denial may feel too heavy to face. Any action we take may seem hopeless given the enormity of the problem. What are we to do? Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects offers us a way forward. Based in Buddhism, deep ecology, and systems theory, the work is arranged in a spiral of four stages: grounding in gratitude, honoring our pain for the world, seeing with new eyes, and going forth. We can move through the spiral as often as we like to reconnect with what Macy calls “active hope”—a clear-eyed determination to engage in healing the world.

Grounding in gratitude

The first time I grasped what Macy means by gratitude, I was listening to the dawn chorus on an April morning in Point Reyes. Birdsong burst from every tree, and in an instant, I understood gladness to be the animating force of the universe: life loving life. It is our birthright as humans to feel this joy and vitality too.

Our experience of gladness helps us notice what is truly satisfying—not consuming luxuries, but enjoying the outdoors and relaxing with family and friends—and feel an easy gratitude that transcends the alienating transactionality of modern life and the accompanying sense that we are always in debt. It’s fortunate that we have birdsong to remind us every morning of what really matters: the elemental joy of belonging in the living world. We return to gratitude as the foundation of our resilience and commitment to life.

Honoring our pain

It’s painful to contemplate the loss of a species that defines home, as the Oak titmouse does for me. When I imagine springtime without that zerpeet, zerpeet, zerpeet, I want to crawl back under the blanket of denial.…

Light Pollution on Bird Migration Behavior

By Lydia Bruno

As urban dwellers, we are only too familiar with the effects of light pollution. Rarely can we see stars at night and often we have to travel to remote locations to even glimpse the wondrous Milky Way. Add to that, studies show light pollution can disrupt our circadian rhythms, affecting our ability to get a good night’s rest.

A recent 2023 study published in Nature Communications, Artificial Light at Night is a Top Predictor of Bird Migration Stopover Density (Horton et al.), outlined how light pollution also significantly impacts birds, especially during migration. This is particularly relevant to San Francisco as the Pacific Flyway, a major migratory route, includes the San Francisco Bay Area. An estimated billion birds travel through this flyway during spring and fall migratory seasons. The majority of these migrants are songbirds and they take flight primarily at night. Skyglow, or the artificial brightening of the night sky by light pollution, affects their nighttime migration by increasing stopover.

What is stopover? Like it sounds, stopover is the act of stopping over a place, essentially a rest stop along the birds’ epic journey, a pause to refuel, rest or take refuge from adverse weather conditions. This is an important and necessary part of their journey. However, due to habitat changes, with many areas becoming drier, less forested and brighter at night, historic stopover locations are at risk.

Along the Pacific Flyway, skyglow was found to be the top driver of stopover in an area. While this may at first seem positive, there are in fact, negative consequences depending on where the stopover occurs. Urban areas, like San Francisco, generate more skyglow than less populated areas and can become ecological traps, luring birds to areas where they are at greater risk of colliding with buildings,predation, and potentially throwing them off course, disconnecting them from their migratory path..

The next step for researchers is to determine whether stopover hotspots are truly important ecological locations, the effect of skyglow luring the birds to the area or a combination of both.

What we do know is, with light pollution increasing at a disconcerting 10% per year in North America, we need to invest in advocacy, collaboration and policy change to decrease this trend and reduce skyglow.

How can you help? There are simple actions we can all take, including turning off unnecessary indoor and outdoor lights at night, closing blinds/curtains after dark, using warm colored LED bulbs (as bluer colored light has larger reach and worsens skyglow) and using dimmers and timers to minimize light usage.…