• Now Is The Time To Garden For Birds

    By Kathy Kramer

     

    Birding from home has become more important than ever in our current sheltered situation. Many of us are learning that it is possible to bird from our windows, yards and sidewalks. There are easy ways to make your home (and surrounding areas) hospitable for birdlife, even while sheltering-at-home. When we learn to include in our gardens the plants that provide food, shelter, and nesting areas for birds, we can watch native wildlife thrive.

    California Swainson’s Thrush by Pam Young

    Gardening for birds is crucial to helping the birds we love. You have likely heard that bird populations have plummeted over the last five decades, with a decline of nearly three billion birds across North America in that time period. The causes of this decline are many but include habitat loss, non-native ornamental plants, outdoor cats, roadside mortality, climate change, and building lights (which disrupt bird migrations and reduce birds’ food supply when moths exhaust themselves on outdoor lights). The current shelter-at-home orders have allowed some local wildlife to flourish again, but there’s so much more we can do to continue to encourage native populations to grow. This is especially true for birds.

    Black-headed Grosbeak by Mark Rauzon

    The link between bird health and native plants is also becoming clearer. On the subject, wildlife ecologist Douglas Tallamy writes, “We must abandon the notion that humans and nature cannot live together… In order to have functioning ecosystems, we need to redesign residential landscapes to support diverse populations. Native plants support much more life than other [types of plants]. Choosing the best plants for your area is the key to [nature’s] success.”

    The backstory behind the native versus ornamental non-native plants issue is fairly simple: while in the nest, and even after they leave it, almost all baby birds feed primarily on caterpillars. Baby birds do not live on seeds, or berries, or sugar water. Caterpillars are not optional in a baby bird diet. Simply put, if we don’t have caterpillars, we won’t have baby birds.

    Female Red-winged Blackbird by Alan Kraukauer

    Here’s an example: it takes 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars, collected by both busy Chickadee parents over the course of sixteen days, to raise a clutch of Chickadee babies. And Chickadees are tiny birds; just a third of an ounce. How many caterpillars does it take to raise a Woodpecker, a bird about eight times heavier? Caterpillars come from the eggs of butterflies and moths, creatures who have specialized laying their eggs on just one or two types of host plants.…

  • Street Life: The San Francisco Edition

    By Richard Bradus

     

    One of the (few) benefits of this crisis is the marked reduction of traffic and the attendant noise, allowing us to hear so much more of what is going on along our neighborhood streets.

    I have been doing exercise walks around Western Addition, Pacific Heights, and Presidio Heights over the past week. Even without binoculars, I have been treated to some nice discoveries.

    All I’ve had to do is listen and investigate.

    California Towhee by John Sharpen

    The California Towhee are obviously common all over the city, but I was unaware that they were present (and active) outside of parks and natural areas. I have encountered several singing from street trees, including near Alamo Square. There’s one Towhee on Scott Street (a few blocks south of Alta Plaza Park) in tree that could be a potential nesting site as well.

    South of Alta Plaza, I have seen Bushtits putting the finishing touches on their nests in a tree. In the same area, I saw a White-crowned Sparrow in and about a probable nest site in dense shrubbery in front of the adjacent house.

    Bushtit by Angie Vogel

    Foraging in the street trees in multiple places are a good assortment of warblers (including a Black-throated Gray Warbler!), Bushtits, Chickadees and the oft skirmishing hummers and increasing numbers (ugh!) of Crows.

    Black-throated Gray Warbler by Daniel Cadieux

    It’s worthwhile to look up at the sky as we walk about, too.

    Yesterday, I was treated to a spectacle as a diminutive Sharp-shinned Hawk made a couple of unsuccessful attacks on a small flock of pigeons, whereupon the pigeons (which looked to be a bit larger than the hawk) turned the tables and actually went after the hawk, apparently chasing it off! Today, over the same California/Fillmore area, there was a Peregrine Falcon intermittently soaring and flapping as it made its way west, having apparently cleared the skies of any other birds.

    Sharp-shinned Hawk by Jerry McFarland

    So, when you get outside to do your necessary exercise or needed grocery runs, take your time and listen. Glance at the sky every so often.

    It is spring and, yes, we may be frustrated to be missing out on the hunt for migrants, but remember our local birds are setting up to breed. Those of you in the western half of San Francisco may find that White-crowned Sparrows, in particular, are nesting in a lot more front and backyards than we ever suspected.…

  • Sheltering in Place: Zuihitsu

    By Gerry Traucht

     

    Editor’s Note: Gerry offers us glimpses of what he sees on his Berkeley strolls. This unique collection embodies the qualities of the beloved Japanese poetic form, Zuihitsu. Zuihitsu is genre of Japanese literature (since adapted by many Western writers) consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author’s surroundings. Photos taken by Gerry. 

     

    1.

    For over a year a Black-crowned Night-Heron has claimed a dumpster on 4th Street behind Market Hall and Peet’s Coffee. Migration and hunting are not his thing, but possibly there is a better story to why he stays here.

    Black-crowned Night Heron.

    He’s a familiar sight. He has an audience, often photographing him. The dumpster is his stage.

    In a pose for the camera.

    Now that the nearby restaurants are closed, the dumpster is largely empty, the streets are empty.

    ~

    2.

    Nearby, the Great Blue Heron roams Cesar Chavez Park and the Berkeley Marina.

    Great Blue Heron, touching down.

    Blue skies, Bay views, San Francisco.

    ~

    3.

    California Gull at Cesar Chavez Park. Usually on the same shoreline rock opposite the Golden Gate Bridge.

    In observation.

    ~

    4.

    My backyard Raven greets me from his usual perch above the deck. It was my birthday. Nice timing.

    A birthday greeting.

    He comes for short visits most days. Because his beak isn’t especially heavy, I don’t know if he’s a Raven or a Crow. He does have the Raven ruffled collar feathers, but not much. He’s a bit brownish, not Crow-black.

    Perched.

    When he’s hungry, he brings his mate. They’re a twosome, as Ravens often are. He seems bigger than a Crow. Not by much.

    What do you think?

    Is my Raven a Crow?

    ~

    5.

    Early April at Aquatic Park, Berkeley.

    An unusual hunt.

    A Great Egret was side hunting with neck and head approaching parallel to the water. He circled, slowly. This side-ways neck technique is the first time I’ve seen it so quickly repeated in prolonged hunting.

    https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/8_Traucht_Side-Hunt_video.m4v

     

     

    He high-stepped and leaned sideways until he spied his target. Every minute or two he had a fish.

    ~

    6.

    Recently, this stylish bird gave the backyard’s other plum tree a visit. Black Phoebe. 99%. That is what my iBird identifier says.

    The Phoebe.

    But he’s brown.

    In the bird books, he resembles an Eastern Phoebe by the color of his back feathers but not the chest pattern.…

  • Birding Through the Feelings

    By Megan Fradley-Smith

     

    One of my earliest childhood memories, one that brings me much joy, is of a moment in kindergarten on a class field trip. I cannot remember where we were, why we were out, or who was there with me, but I can remember looking high up at the sky, and becoming mesmerized by a swirling kettle of Turkey Vultures.

    I pointed this out to my teacher, who was stunned that I had noticed something so distant. Her praise made an impression, and I still feel that rush of pride when I manage to observe a soaring raptor, so graceful, so free.

    Cooper’s Hawk by Megan

    For me, birding has become a lifeline in many ways. During my first pregnancy over a decade ago, a Red-Shouldered Hawk would appear in my backyard, nearly every day, always when I most needed it. To me, it became a symbol of hope, and any time I felt uneasy, I unknowingly turned to the the skies for a Hawk. Usually, I found one.

    A Red-tailed Hawk takes off from its perch by Megan

    A few years later, I worked as a mental health therapist in Northern Florida, making a long commute to a rural facility each day. This was a tumultuous time in my life (I was a young mother, the breadwinner, the empath working with extremely high-risk clients). I felt the stress in every fiber of my being. However, now that I am so far removed from those days, what I remember most is seeing Swallow-Tailed Kites gliding above the trees as I drove, their carefree movements never failing to delight me, no matter the stress I carried.

    My final months in Florida were rife with hardship, but it is the Kites and Hawks that stay with me, all this time later.

    Spotted Towhee by Megan

    I fully leaned into birding last year, as my casual observations grew into more structured study. However, this ‘leaning in’ was more of a pulling myself out of the depths of postpartum anxiety, as the birth of my third child in early 2019, and the transition that followed, stretched me more than I have words to describe.

    One evening, weighed down by a long day of mothering and teaching and cleaning and breastfeeding and not sleeping, I set my children up with toys and stepped outside for 5 minutes alone. That evening air enveloped me, the wind brought the sounds of dozens of backyard birds, and I felt myself let out a breath that I had been holding for days, or weeks.…

  • When Birds Are More Than a Hobby

    By Alan Krakauer

     

     

    Like many of you, I count birds as a “necessary luxury,” something I feel I can’t live without, or at least I’m loathe to try. I’m one of those people who will temporarily exit a human conversation if an accipiter zips by or I catch a different bird song in the background chorus.

    Covid-19 has certainly limited where and when I’ve been out to look for birds this spring. More than that, it has me thinking about another group of bird-o-philes who have been thrown for a loop by the pandemic – ornithologists. Among my various hats, I’ve spent 25 years as a researcher of bird behavior and ecology. I’ve now heard from friends and colleagues how this virus is turning their year upside down.

    Imagine leading international research crews in the midst of months long overseas projects and learning you have mere days to pack up and jet back to the US before travel restrictions slam down… or devoting all winter to intricate experiments in order to learn something about a bird population, only to have the vital vernal second act to the study abruptly cancelled… or a former intern who’s landed a coveted wildlife guide position now facing weeks or months with no travelers coming because the national parks are closed… or being forced to teach Field Ornithology from an online classroom instead of a cool clear March morning, unable to ignite students’ imagination by transforming wild birds (almost ephemeral and theoretical objects to the uninitiated) and making them instantly and irrevocably tangible when carefully unraveling them from a mist net.

    As these stories have reached me in the confines of my office chair, I’ve been reflecting on my time as a field biologist. I’ve been scouring my hard drives and even “real” photo albums from my pre-digital days while reminiscing about my time outside in the service of biological knowledge.

    Russet-throated Puffbird and Great Potoo taken from Alan Krakauer’s photo archives

    There was my first job post-college in the Venezuelan Llanos soaking up neotropical biodiversity. Flipping through the aging 3×5” prints from a quarter-century ago, the exotic avian names somehow leap to the front of my brain: Great Potoo, Russet-throated Puffbird, Red-billed Scythebill. A present-day photo of a Wild Turkey below San Pablo Ridge will take me back 20 years, striding through lupine and poppy-cloaked hillsides in the Central Coast Range following flocks of turkeys for my Ph.D.…