By Steve and Carol Lombardi
So there I was, standing in a marsh staring at a bird that my Sibley’s field guide identified as N. nycticorax or Black-crowned Night-Heron. As I leafed through my field guide I found myself wondering where the scientific and English names came from, who decided on the spelling, why the scattered capitals, and really—who jammed those hyphens into the common name?
Of course, we all learned in high school how Carl Linnaeus invented binomial nomenclature in the 1700s, giving a Latinized Genus species name to every organism. Since 1895, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) has been the primary body for assigning scientific names to animals. (As you would guess, there’s an organization that names plants, too: the ICN.[1]) Thus, the history of the name N. nycticorax is well documented, and there is little argument about the bird’s scientific name, spelling, or capitalization.
However, it gets a little trickier when we start talking about common names. People have complained for hundreds of years about the lack of uniformity in common names of all living things. Yet there are only a handful of organisms whose names have been standardized by some organizing body.[2] Birds are one of these few.
Someone decided this would be a Black-crowned Night-Heron and not a Red-eyed Night-Heron. Photo by Bill Walker
In the United States, the American Ornithological Society (formerly the American Ornithological Union and still usually referred to as the AOU) maintains—and occasionally rearranges—the taxonomy of bird species in North America. Reputable American field guides and online sources like the Cornell allaboutbirds website use the AOU taxonomy. The AOU Checklists link each scientific name with one standardized English-language common name.
The AOU uses a detailed protocol to determine the naming, spelling, capitalization, and hyphenation of both formal and common names. Hence, the bird staring at me with its unsettling red eyes is listed in the seventh edition of the AOU Checklist as Nycticorax nycticorax with the standardized common name “Black-crowned Night-Heron.” Note the hyphenated “Night-Heron.” The first AOU Checklist in 1886, wherein they made the case for standardizing common names and spellings, lists the bird as “Black-crowned Night Heron” (no hyphen).[3]
First edition of AOU Checklist, 1886
Capitalization, then hyphenation.
The practice of capitalizing common names goes back hundreds of years in the scientific community. The AOU capitalized common bird names even before their first edition of the Checklist, yet newspapers and most other general interest publications insist on using lowercase for common names.…

By Ilana DeBare

Talk about grand finales! Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s traveling Centennial exhibit arrived at its final venue of 2017 this month – Lindsay Wildlife Experience in Walnut Creek – and looked like it had been designed to fit that exact space.

Over 150 GGBA members and friends gathered to launch the exhibit on Sunday, October 15, a beautiful afternoon that came after the week of terrible North Bay wildfires.

They were welcomed by Lindsay’s expert wildlife rehabilitation volunteers offering close-up views of some of their live, rescued birds, including a Northern Barred Owl and Great Grey Owl.

Attendees then browsed the colorful 14-panel exhibit on GGBA and its accomplishments, along with a display of striking taxidermied birds from the Lindsay collection. Kudos to GGBA staffmember Clay Anderson for hanging the taxidermied specimens so beautifully!

The Centennial exhibit fit beautifully in Lidnsay’s downstairs space. Photo by Ilana DeBare Belted Kingfisher from the Lindsay taxidermy collection / Photo by Ilana DeBare

GGBA board member Jill Weader O’Brien and Lindsay Wildlife board member Elizabeth McWhorter welcomed the crowd, as did Ariana Rickard, representing Mount Diablo Audubon Society, which serves the Walnut Creek area. Then GGBA Executive Dirctor Cindy Margulis gave a passionate summary of the importance of GGBA’s work – made even more salient by events like the recent fires that put the people, landscapes, and wildlife of Northern California at risk.

Of course there was a 100^th birthday cake, frosted with images of some of the species that GGBA has protected over the years: Western Snowy Plover, California Least Tern, Black Oystercatcher, Black-crowned Night-Heron, Burrowing Owl. (So some members went home able to make the unusual claim, “I ate a Burrowing Owl.”)

Happy 100th bird-day! Photo by Ilana DeBare Some of the attendees at the Centennial launch reception at Lindsay Wildlife Experience. Photo by Ilana DeBare.

If you couldn’t attend the launch party, you can still enjoy and take part in the Centennial!

• An anonymous donor has offered $10,000 in matching funds for GGBA in honor of the Centennial. To help achieve this match, we need your tax-deductible donation by October 31^st. Click here to give easily and securely online, or send a check to Golden Gate Bird Alliance, Attn: Centennial Match, 2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite G, Berkeley CA 94702.
• Come visit the exhibit at Lindsay! It will be on display in two areas of the museum — upstairs in the Buckeye Room and also on the lower level–  through February 2018.

…

By Jack Dumbacher
Powered flight is perhaps the most iconic ability of birds. Their feathers and wings have set them apart from other vertebrates, and they have amazing adaptations that have allowed them to master flight, including special lungs and airsacs to capture oxygen incredibly efficiently, and hollow or reduced bones and no teeth to cut down weight.
There are many ways to get into the skies, and birds are not the only vertebrates that have evolved flight. Within the mammals, there are bats. The oldest known bat fossil dates to about 52 million years ago from the Green River formations in Colorado and Wyoming. Although bats are less efficient flyers than birds, bats are more maneuverable. Their wings consist of a thin membrane of skin called the patagium, stretched between their four finger bones and the side of their body. Because their fingers are so long and spread through the patagium, they have superb control of the shape and size of their wings, making them incredibly agile fliers.
But birds have been flying for nearly three times as long as bats. The oldest bird fossils are from Archaeopteryx, found in the Solnhofen limestone quarries of Bavaria, Germany, and these fossils were dated to about 150 million years ago. These fossil bones mark the beginning of birds in the fossil record.
This artist’s rendering of Archeopteryx shows how much it may have resembled our modern birds. / By Nobu Tamara via Wikipedia.
Most of the close dinosaur relatives of Archaeopteryx were covered in feathers and some even had wings. We call this group of dinosaurs “Paraves,” and they include some four-winged dinosaurs (like Microraptor, having feathered forelimbs as well as hindlimbs) and many others that were fierce terrestrial carnivores, like the Velociraptor made famous by Jurassic Park. (The film incorrectly shows Velociraptor with scaly skin instead of feathers!)
Representatives of the most bizarre and largest flying vertebrates were also around at the time of Archaeopteryx. In fact, the first fossil of this group to be described was collected from the same Solnhofen limestone formation of Bavaria that produced the famed Archaeopteryx specimens. That fossil was described in 1784, and is now known as Pterodactylus antiquus, which derives from Latin for “ancient wing finger.”
The pterodactyl is just one of a huge group of flying reptiles called the Pterosaurs. Pterosaurs were capable of powered flight, and species from this group of reptiles lived from 228 to 66 million years ago, dying out along with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous.…

By Mary Betlach
I’ve walked at Heron’s Head Park on San Francisco’s southeastern shoreline since 2005 and casually observed juvenile Black Oystercatchers there most years. One of our most distinctive shorebirds because of their bright orange bills, oystercatchers are at risk because of the dwindling amount of rocky shoreline they need for nesting. They’re already designated a Species of Special Concern by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and climate-related sea level rise will only heighten their breeding challenges.
This year, Golden Gate Bird Alliance created a Heron’s Head Monitoring Group to gather data on the Black Oystercatchers there – myself, Annie Armstrong, Patricia Greene, and Tim and Alexia Tindol. We had the privilege of watching a pair raise a chick on a dilapidated pier about 65 yards from the shoreline in the center of Lashlighter Basin.
(Another Golden Gate Bird Alliance member monitored Black Oystercatchers at Land’s End in San Francisco in 2015 as part of an ongoing Audubon California survey of the species: You can read about it here.) 
The pier and the oystercatcher family / Photo by Tim Tindol
Heron’s Head Park viewed from the air, showing how it got its name. Lashlighter Basin is the water below (north of) the Bay Trail
We started our monitoring on March 31, observing the shoreline area twice a week in teams of two. We quickly realized that the old pier is an ideal location for a Black Oystercatcher nest. It is close to rich feeding grounds along the rocky shoreline and separated from ground predators by the surrounding water. It’s high enough above the water to avoid flooding, yet both remaining ends of the pier provide a gentle slope to the water. The height of the pier facilitates a 360-degree view of the surrounding area, giving the adult oystercatchers optimal surveillance against airborne predators. The pier has numerous cross beams and other decaying structural features that provide cover for the nest and hatchlings.
There are several potential airborne predators at this site. A Western Gull colony nests nearby on the roof of the Recology building. (Fortunately, the gulls hatched at a point when the oystercatcher chick was most likely too big for dinner).
Other predators were American Crows, which approached the pier fairly closely and were chased by the adult oystercatchers. There were also Common Raven, Osprey, and Peregrine Falcon flyovers. Rock Pigeons also walked the pier and were chased off by the Black Oystercatchers. …

By William Hudson & Ilana DeBare

The new two-mile McCosker Loop Trail in Orinda is a short trail with a long story behind it – a story that could easily be called “Golden Gate Bird Alliance and the 1,300 acres.”

The trail is part of Gateway Valley, an area now known as Wilder, located south of Highway 24 and just east of the Caldecott Tunnel. The area is critical wildlife habitat – a key link in the north-south wildlife corridor that runs from Wildcat Canyon to Lake Chabot. Thanks to GGBA’s expertise, counsel, and resources, over 1,300 strategically-located acres of Gateway Valley were added to our protected wildlands.

The story began in the 1980s, as open spaces around the Bay Area came under increasing development pressure. The northern reaches of Gateway Valley — across Highway 24 from the California Shakespeare Theater — belonged to Ed Daly, owner of World Airways, known for its government contracts during the Vietnam war.

Daly was supposedly in the process of donating his land to the East Bay Regional Park District when he passed away in 1984. His family then sold it to a development group, setting the stage for years of contention. With the later addition of land to the south owned by Daly’s financial officer, the total project area was 978 acres. Homes were the main focus but a 27-hole golf course was included in every proposal until a settlement was ultimately reached, driven by GGBA.

Views from the McCosker Loop Trail, which covers some of the Gateway Valley land that has been preserved from development. Photo by William Hudson

Despite its prime location, the valley had not been developed in prior decades for a good reason. The hillsides were unstable, and studies revealed problems even deeper than expected, with hidden landslides in the underlying bedrock. The extensive grading and drainage needed to support roads and construction could not be done without destroying existing creeks, wetlands, and seeps, and numerous old growth trees, a variety of habitats home to species including endangered California Red-legged Frogs and Alameda Whipsnakes, as well as majestic Golden Eagles.

The valley’s natural attributes made it a resource of national importance. This was significant, because it meant that, in addition to obtaining approval by the City of Orinda, any development had to be also vetted by state and federal environmental agencies, a process coordinated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that provided numerous opportunities to advocate for the environment.…