Valle Vista: Birding Hotspot

Valle Vista: Birding Hotspot

By Maureen Lahiff

This area—accessible with an EBMUD recreation permit—is sometimes known as Upper San Leandro Reservoir, but the reservoir is just part of the experience. What makes Moraga’s Valle Vista Staging Area a birding hotspot is an amazing array of habitats: grassland, chaparral, riparian willows and alders, redwoods and pines, mixed-forest deciduous trees, and fruit trees left behind by former residents. Oh, and lots of poison oak, whose berries are enjoyed by over 50 species of birds.

Appreciating the land and water

Now managed by the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) for watershed protection, the land bears traces of past and current uses. There are bedrock mortars—used by native Jalquin people for pounding acorns—along Moraga Creek, which flows into Upper San Leandro Reservoir. The land to the east was part of the rancho granted to Joaquin Moraga and Juan Bernal in 1835. The Moraga Horsemen’s Association today leases land from EBMUD for horse boarding and riding; they actively manage about 100 acres of pasture near the head of Upper San Leandro Reservoir.

Fruit trees from bygone ranching days at Valle Vista Staging Area. Photo: Maureen Lahiff. Ruins of an old structure along the trail to the reservoir. Photo: Maureen Lahiff.

Two major forces have shaped and continue to shape the landscape: trees and water. Their stories are intertwined; as reservoirs were created, trees were planted around them to stabilize the hillsides. I’ve done my best to put together a brief set of facts using Internet resources. I think I’ve got the major sweep of things, but more knowledgeable readers may have facts to add or correct.

The Gold Rush caused a brief period of bustling logging in the hills east of Oakland. As Sylvia Linsteadt writes in Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area, “by 1854, the biggest trees were gone, and by 1860, all the mills had closed down.” Two of the logging boom towns are now under Upper San Leandro Reservoir; one may have been called Valle Vista.  There was a second wave of active logging after the 1906 earthquake. The redwoods we enjoy in nearby Redwood Regional Park are third-growth trees.

Nuttall’s Woodpecker at Upper San Leandro Reservoir by Bob Lewis

Widespread planting of eucalyptus began in 1910, led by the Pacific Water Company. Monterey pines were widely planted around the reservoir in the 1930s by the Soil Conservation Corps. Even if they were not plagued by a fungus causing Pitch Canker, Monterey pines have a relatively short life span.…

Bird-Safe Buildings advance in Berkeley, Emeryville

Bird-Safe Buildings advance in Berkeley, Emeryville

By Ilana DeBare

The cities of Berkeley and Emeryville took major steps last month towards enacting Bird-Safe Building laws. Noreen Weeden, Director of Volunteers at Golden Gate Bird Alliance, has been instrumental in winning approval of such laws in San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, and Alameda, as well as the pending Emeryville and Berkeley ordinances. Here we speak with Noreen about her Bird-Safe Building work that has put the Bay Area in the forefront of this important effort to save birds’ lives.

Q: What is the status of the Emeryville and Berkeley ordinances?

Noreen: In Emeryville, the planning commission will review an ordinance in February 2020 and then provide final language to the City Council, which has already agreed they want a Bird-Safe Buildings policy.

In Berkeley, the planning commission will review ordinance language that has already been drafted. The next step will be to make any requested changes, approve it, and implement it in 2020.

Northern Waterthrush, an unusual Bay Area visitor, killed in a window collision in Berkeley / Photo by Douglas Greenberg

Q: How long have you been working on getting Bay Area cities to add Bird-Safe Building policies to their planning codes?

Noreen: We started in 2009. The way I got interested is that I was walking to downtown San Francisco, and on Third Street noticed a dead hummingbird. I wondered, ‘How did it hit the window and die?’ Then I noticed some resources from the American Bird Conservancy, which had just started writing articles about window collisions.

In San Francisco, we were talking at that time with the planning commission about the impact of nighttime lights on birds and promoting “Lights Out” guidelines for migration season. The commissioners were happy to hear about positive steps they could take, and said, ‘Come back to us with more things we can do.’ So we started talking to them about Bird-Safe Buildings.

Q: How big a danger to birds are window collisions?

Noreen: The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that window collisions kill 1 million birds per day. That’s the low estimate; there are estimates that are higher than that. [Estimates range as high as 988 million deaths per year.] Often collisions occur where the windows are reflecting vegetation or the sky.

Q: Why do birds fly into windows so much?

Noreen: They don’t recognize glass as a solid, just as we don’t. We don’t like to admit it, but almost all of us have walked into a sliding glass door once or twice.…

Our 2019 Audubon heroes

By Ilana DeBare

It wasn’t hard deciding on the 2019 winners of our annual conservation and environmental education awards.

What was hard was was figuring out how to give them the awards.

Golden Gate Bird Alliance  isn’t an organization that holds black-tie award dinners in glitzy hotel ballrooms. And our two winners—Dan Richman and Eileen Richey—are more likely to be found outdoors in nature than inside ballrooms.

So we took the awards to them—in a meadow at Golden Gate Park, where they were participating in a nest box monitoring work day!

Eileen Richey and Dan Richman hold their awards, with GGBA Executive Director Pam Young and Volunteer Director Noreen Weeden

Last weekend, near Western Bluebird and Tree Swallow boxes at the Bison Paddock, GGBA Executive Director Pam Young presented Dan with our Elsie Roemer Conservation Award and Eileen with our Paul Covel Environmental Education Award.

“Dan and Eileen embody the spirit and passion for nature that all our GGBA members admire,” said Pam. “Their years of commitment to invaluable behind-the-scenes work help make Golden Gate Park an even more welcoming place for wildlife.”

For ten years, Eileen has been training GGBA volunteers to use Cornell’s nest watch protocols and collect data on the Tree Swallow and Western Bluebird nest boxes in Golden Gate Park. She then compiled the data into a report that we share with the volunteers and use to make recommendations to SF Rec and Park for improvements. (Click here for a story and more photos about that!)

Eileen Richey confers with Rec & Park staff over placement of nest boxes in 2017. Volunteers trained by Eileen install nest boxes in 2017 at the Bison Paddock. Male Western Bluebird by Allen Hirsch

Dan has been a volunteer on our San Francisco Conservation Committee for over 15 years. He’s used his skills as a general contractor to build a variety of nest boxes, including some installed at Stow Lake in Golden gate Park. (Click here for more about that!) Dan has assembled kits for other volunteers to make nest boxes and fishing line recycling containers. He is also a write who’s updated our Inviting Wildlife into Your Backyard brochure and the Almanac for Gardeners, used by SF Rec and Park gardeners to be aware of bird activities throughout the year.

Dan Richman installing a Wood Duck nest box at Stow Lake in 2016. Photo by Lee Karney
Male Wood Duck at Stow Lake / Photo by Alan Hopkins

Thank you, Dan and Eileen!

…
The Westernmost WC in Europe: Birding Iceland

The Westernmost WC in Europe: Birding Iceland

By Bob Carloni

My wife Linda and I had wanted to visit Iceland for many years, even before we started birding. Our opportunity came in July, when we joined four other Golden Gate Bird Alliance members and eight other birders from Portland, Minnesota, and points east on an eleven-day Golden Gate Bird Alliance trip there. Led by Ivan Phillipsen and Patty Newland of Wild Latitudes, it was an amazing trip in an amazing land. We sought out not just birds but also interesting plants and geologic and cultural features.

Iceland is the original “land of ice and fire.” Sitting atop the mid-Atlantic Ridge, a tectonic spreading zone, it is a country of vast lava fields that have been sculpted by glaciers. Although located just south of the Arctic Circle, the weather is moderated by the Gulf Stream. Temperatures were typically in the 60s. The sky was often overcast and dressing in layers was a must. Those of us who live near the San Francisco Bay felt right at home.

The number of bird species in Iceland is small (only 77), but the quantity—masses of nesting puffins, razorbills, Northern Fulmar, kittiwake, various sorts of murres and guillemots, and Arctic Terns—more than compensates.

 

Approximate locations of places visited: 1-Reykjavik. 2-Thingvellir. 3-Snaefellsnes Peninsula. 4-Latrabarg. 5-Isafjordur. 6-Heydalur. 7-Akureyri. 8-Lake Myvatn. 9-Asbyrgi Canyon.

Our trip began in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital and largest city. Just twenty-five minutes from our centrally located hotel, we visited a pond and a shoreline that yielded several interesting species, including a Purple Sandpiper, Common Shelduck, and Long-Tailed Ducks.

The next day we journeyed along the famous Golden Circle, a well-known route not far from Reykjavik. Our first stop was Thingvellir, a national park on the site of the world’s oldest continuous parliament, which was established in 930 CE. Here we saw White Wagtails and Red-Throated Loons in breeding plumage. We visited several notable geological sites: The east edge of the North American tectonic plate; Geysir, the one for which all other geysers are named; and the incredible Gullfoss Falls.

Gullfoss waterfall by Steve Price

Note 1: In July, the sun “sets” ( it gets a little dusky) at 1 a.m. and rises at 4 a.m. Even the best blackout shade leaks enough light at the edges to make sleeping difficult at times. 

From Reykjavik, we proceeded in vans nicknamed for our guides (the “I-van” and the “Patty Wagon”) through the Snaefellsnes Peninsula on the western side of Iceland.…

Vaux’s Swift monitoring hits its tenth year

Vaux’s Swift monitoring hits its tenth year

By Michael Helm

This fall, for the 10th consecutive year, Golden Gate Bird Alliance members monitored the number of migrating Vaux’s Swifts spending the night in the chimneys of McNear Brick & Block brickyard in San Rafael.

Vaux’s Swifts are West Coast birds with a long migration: Some travel as far as 4,000 miles from the Alaska panhandle to Panama. Like swallows, they catch insects on the fly with fast, graceful swoops. Unlike swallows, they can’t perch. They sleep by clinging to rough vertical surfaces, using their tail as a kickstand. They roost communally, with thousands of swifts—sometimes even tens of thousands—cramming together for warmth and safety inside hollow trees and old brick chimneys.

Vaux’s Swifts enter a chimney at McNear Brickyard / Photo by Michael Helm Vaux’s Swift / Photo by Bettina Arrigoni Swifts roosting en masse in a Washington state chimney / Photo courtesy of Larry Schwitters

Birders in Washington state began documenting Vaux’s Swift roosts there in the early 2000s, in part to preserve the old chimneys needed by the birds. But the swifts’ other migratory stopping points remained a mystery.

Then, in 2010, Golden Gate Bird Alliance birding instructor Rusty Scalf discovered a major Vaux’s Swift roost in the Bay Area—the chimneys of McNear Brick & Block in San Rafael.

While the plant workers and the McNear family were well aware of some kind of occupation of the long-decommissioned chimneys, it wasn’t until Rusty stumbled on the site that the “occupiers” were identified as Vaux’s swifts (and not some kind of confused bat).

Since then, GGBA members have shown up assiduously just before sunset for two months each fall to count the swifts, in coordination with Larry Schwitters’ “Vaux’s Happening” regional observation project. It takes concentration, a good scope, and a quick hand on a clicker for counting: The sky around the chimneys can shift from open blue to a black swarm of diving and circling swifts at a moment’s notice.

McNear Brickyard / Photo by Michael Helm Looking for swifts as sunset approaches / Photo by Michael Helm

The southbound migration typically runs from around August 15 to mid-October. This year’s Vaux’s Swift count season closed on October 23, when sunset came and went with no swifts.

GGBA and Marin Audubon led one public field trip apiece in mid-September, at the height of the migration, courtesy of McNear Brick and Block and its proprietor, Dan McNear.…