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Behind the Scenes at the California Academy

Editor’s Note: To be a part of this year’s Birdathon trip Behind the Scenes at the Cal Academy go HERE for more information and registration. To see a full list of 2019 Birdathon trips go to https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/birdathon-2019-fundraising-trips/

Text and photos by Alex Smolyanskaya

One of the most memorable trips of my first Birdathon with Golden Gate Bird Alliance was our evening tour of the bird collections at the California Academy of Sciences. The drawers upon drawers of distant species, rare species, and even extinct species were breathtaking. A level deeper than birding in the field, they offered a glimpse into how aspects of ornithology get done and an opportunity to get up close to birds I may never see in real life.

We were greeted by Jack Dumbacher, Curator of Birds and Mammals at the California Academy of Sciences. He started with a slideshow overview of the collections, their specialty geographies, and how the specimens are collected and used. He told us about studies of individual variability, changes over time, and how old specimens are occasionally sampled for genetic analysis. Sitting in the windowless conference room it was easy to feel like we were scientists, imagining all the things could learn from a vast collection of birds from all over the world.

When asked which birds we wanted to see first, “hummingbirds” was a quick reply from the group. One of the dozens of hummingbird drawers probably contained a hundred tiny magnificent creatures. Each species included a dozen or more individuals and one could see small differences between each one. How did they earn those differences? Was it their genes, their lifestyle, or simply the generation into which they were born?

The most striking part of the collection was a haphazardly arranged cabinet containing extinct species mounted for public display. They were real and very alive once, and now they were here and no one would ever see them alive again. We saw ivory-billed woodpeckers, passenger pigeons, Carolina parakeets. Among them was a kakapo, a New Zealand nocturnal ground-parrot — not yet extinct but dangerously close. I felt privileged to be among these creatures and inspired to be an activist for the birds that are still here.

This trip is being offered again during this year’s Birdathon and a few slots remain. Which birds would you like to see first?

Alex Smolyanskaya has been birding the Bay Area since moving here in 2015.…

From Birdathon Novice to Fundraising Champ

By Ilana DeBare

Marjorie Powell had never done Birdathon fundraising before. In fact, she’d never done any kind of fundraising — no raffle ticket sales, no Girl Scout cookies, nothing.

Yet Marj ended up as our top first-time fundraiser last Birdathon, generating $550 to support Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s conservation and education activities.

“People do respond in ways you don’t anticipate, and are often more generous than you anticipate,” she said. “The big hurdle is just getting started.”

Marj’s path to Birdathon started when she moved to the Bay Area in 2014 with her husband Joe, after retiring as an attorney for a trade association on the East Coast. Living along a tributary to Chesapeake Bay, she had enjoyed birding there and chose Alameda as her Bay Area home because of its beautiful shoreline and copious shorebirds.

“We moved from one bay to another,” she said.

Birding at Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary, she met GGBA Executive Director Cindy Margulis, a fellow Alameda resident who encouraged her to get involved in the organization. She initially considered taking part in Birdathon 2015 but didn’t sign up for a trip in time.

“I tend to put off making decisions,” she said. “There were several trips I wanted to go on, but by the time I decided which one I wanted, they were all full.”

Marjorie Powell and her award certificate as top first-time Birdathon 2017 fundraiser / Photo by Ilana DeBare

So in 2017, Marj decided to act more quickly. She was drawn to a number of trips, but picked one that she would unlikely be able to do on her own — the behind-the-scenes tour of International Bird Rescue. Because revenues from that trip would be split between GGBA and Bird Rescue, she set an ambitious goal of raising $500.

“I’d never done fundraising, so that was totally new to me,” she said. “I’d just been at the other end, where I bought all kinds of Girls Scout cookies and wrapping paper, especially when people I worked with were raising money for their kids’ activities.”

Marj was nervous about a lot of it — how to set up her fundraising page, how to express the reasons for her participation in a short space, whether her friends would be irritated by her solicitation.

But she signed up and GGBA staff walked her through both how to create her page and how to approach her friends.…

Dancing with Sage Grouse

By Bruce Mast

Editor’s note: If you would like to experience Sage Grouse for yourself, we currently have one spot available for our March 22nd trip. For more information and registration go to https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/birdathon-2019-fundraising-trips/

The eastern sky was just beginning to glow pink. We were cold. It was early spring in the eastern Sierras and we were cold. And under-caffeinated. We had been up since 4 a.m., bundling into our down and fleece, driving since 5 a.m. past the High Desert State Prison, and then trudging up the flank of Shaffer Mountain to shiver expectantly on the side of a rutted jeep road. We were 20 hardy souls from Golden Gate Bird Alliance, under the veteran leadership of Dave Quady. Why had we journeyed northeast to Susanville to visit such a desolate place? The answer came soon enough.

Grouse watching at Shaffer Lek

The answer came quietly—low, muffled plopping sounds from the north. A binocular scan revealed an expanse of yellow, lava-strewn grass interrupting the sagebrush sea. But some of the rocks were moving! As morning light spread over the landscape, the tableau came into focus. Greater Sage Grouse, those enigmatic denizens of Basin and Range sagebrush country, were gathering for their annual lekking ritual. Wikipedia tells us that a lek is an aggregation of male animals gathered to engage in competitive displays to entice visiting females, which are surveying prospective mates. The term derives from the Swedish “lek”, a noun which typically translates as “play”. The term was originally used for Black Grouse (Swedish: “orrlek”) and for Western Capercaillie (Swedish: “tjäderlek”).

Sage Grouse, Shaffer Lek, Lassen Co., March 19, 2016

On this morning, multiple male Sage Grouse strutted regally, their spiky tails fanned, white feathering on the sides and back of their necks forming a royal ruff. Large air sacs on their breasts suggested avian bagpipes. Scope views revealed large yellow bare patches on their breasts, a yellow fleshy comb above the eye, and wispy filoplumes extending from their nape.

The dominant males held court in the center of the lek, challenging newcomers for status and position. Most interactions involved choreographed strutting and posturing but occasionally a wing fight was required to put a young male in his place.

How many birds were there? In some years, I had counted as few as a half dozen males but this year repeated scans consistently tallied 25. But where were the females?…

Albany Mudflats-McLaughlin Eastshore State Park-Albany Bulb

Editor’s note: If you’ve never taken the time to read a trip report, you are missing out. Please enjoy Fred’s report and this “snapshot” of a morning at the Albany mudflats.

By Fred Werner

On January 26th, 40 people showed up including seasoned experts, total novices and everywhere in between. It was a mild day for January: mostly cloudy but with no wind, the Bay was glassy. We started the day scanning the mudflats, taking in the scattered American Avocets and other assorted shorebirds, coots and ducks. Multiple Red-tailed Hawks flew by but the foraging flocks didn’t seem too concerned.

American Avocet Albany 19-01-26

Moving on to the uplands area of the McLaughlin Eastshore State Park, we got even better views of the Canvasbacks and some of the other ducks, and really nice views of a lone Mew Gull.

Mew Gull – Albany 19-01-26

The biggest highlight of the day was the Burrowing Owl standing in fairly tall grass in the middle of its protected enclosure, patiently awaiting some excitement. For us, he was it!!!

Burrowing Owl Albany 19-01-26

As we rounded the curve at the west end of the Burrowing Owl area, most people headed for home. But a Red-throated Loon cruising along the flooded shoreline below us, beckoned us to continue. Three people joined the optional extension out to the tip of the Albany Bulb, beginning with a chase for the perfect view of that loon. These few intrepid birders were rewarded richly for their efforts.

Red-throated Loon – Albany 19-01-26

Jutting a half mile further out into the Bay, the rocky spit at the tip of the Bulb was a refuge sought by large flocks of shorebirds as the tides rose, including quite a few we hadn’t seen yet today: Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plover, Least and Spotted Sandpipers, Black Turnstones, a lone Black Oystercatcher, and one Eurasian Wigeon trying to blend in with a large raft of American Wigeons. The massive schooling flocks of Western Sandpipers also put on a spectacular show out there, as did the White-tailed Kites and the Osprey.

Black-bellied Plovers – Albany 19-01-26

Western and least sandpipers

Black Turnstone – Albany 19-01-26

Fred Werner lives in Berkeley where he teaches high school science and design. A native of Washington DC, he first became interested in birds when he failed a bird calls quiz as a sophomore at the University of Michigan. Later, he studied ornithology at Cornell University, researching fruit-eating birds and reforestation in Costa Rica. …

Enjoy Our Wintering Birds While You Can

By Lee Friedman

[Note: If you cannot see the accompanying photographs or if they are blurry, please click on the title or the “read in browser” link to view this blog on the GGBA website.]

“While you can” refers to the next few months, after which our wintering migrant birds will depart to their breeding grounds elsewhere and be gone until fall. But it could also refer to the longer-run sustainability of bird migration patterns as our global climate changes. None of us knows when one or more migrating species might find it necessary to change their migratory patterns simply in an attempt to survive. White Storks that breed in Europe, for example, are already forgoing their traditional African wintering ground and choosing to migrate a much shorter distance within Europe. Perhaps some of the migrant species of birds that we can see today (and in the next few months) might not be returning in comparable numbers in future years. But they are exquisite to see and to appreciate now, while we are privileged to have them.

Bird species in one geographic location are generally classified into one of two categories: residents that are year-round, and migrants that are there for only part of the year. Within the migrant category, there are the birds that are generally there during the summer to breed but elsewhere during the winter, and the wintering migrants that arrive in the fall and leave in the spring to go elsewhere to breed. The focus of this post is on the wintering migrants (those here now). There are other more transient types of migrants as well: those that may regularly pass through our area on their way to their breeding and/or wintering areas (e.g. Hermit Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warbler), as well as “vagrants” that we don’t really expect but show up occasionally perhaps because they have gotten off course (e.g. a Summer Tanager seen from last October to January in the Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve). But back to the wintering migrants—it might be natural to think of them as visitors, but ornithologists think that they are descended from those who at one time were full-time residents of the winter grounds. In other words, the wintering birds are simply returning to their ancestral homes. More reason to appreciate them, I think.

What are the wintering species? I’m going to describe a few of my favorites, chosen to illustrate differences in migration patterns and the different parts of the world they rely upon in addition to our own.…