By Lee Aurich

This is about a living bird that has the longest bird fossil history — stretching back to the time of the dinosaurs. The Sandhill Crane is a large, strong, but awkward looking creature. With a wingspan greater than six feet, it weights around eight to nine pounds (which is heavy for a bird). Sandhill Cranes form pair bonds and begin breeding between ages two and seven years old. They mate for life spending their next two decades together.

During the winter hundreds of Sandhill Cranes gather in the California Central Valley, and thousands gather in the Rio Grande river valley of New Mexico. These photos are from Bosque del Apache, a National Wildlife Refuge dedicated to nurturing the wintering cranes with safe locations for sleeping, water, and food.

This story begins at sunset as the cranes assemble together for safety in a shallow pond. During the night, one or two cranes will stand guard, listening for footsteps in the pond from potential predators; their hard, sharp beaks minimize the actual threat of predation.

The cranes arrive in small family groups, landing much like an airplane with their equivalent of airfoil braking:

Photo by Lee Aurich.

In this particular pond, conveniently for human observers located alongside a small public road, perhaps fifty to one hundred cranes will gather for the night. In prior years there were more; the National Wildlife Service (NWS) has opened additional ponds to encourage the cranes to spread out to reduce the potential for disease transmission due to overcrowding.

Photo by Lee Aurich.

In the morning, the cranes get a leisurely start after sunrise. They depart in small family groups, communicating both vocally (mostly “here I am” calls) and with physical motions.

This pose is “I am ready to fly” which eventually leads to family members adopting it and then departing.

Photo by Lee Aurich.

Despite large wings and strong muscles, cranes prefer to take off though a combination of running and wing flapping. On one very cold morning, shallow portions of the pond froze solid. This allows us to watch the foot work and appreciate the sharp claws that minimize slipping on the ice.

Takeoff begins with a strong downward and forward pushing flap:

Photo by Lee Aurich Photo by Lee Aurich.

assisted by running.

Photo by Lee Aurich

A family group, flying over fields of grain. The adults are in front, with the red, bald patches on their foreheads.…

Editor’s note: Here in the Bay Area, there are no Northern Cardinals perched on snow-laden holly bushes. Instead, for iconic winter holiday imagery, we have Cedar Waxwings feasting on bright red toyon berries! In this article, reprinted from Bay Nature magazine, Golden Gate Bird Alliance field trip leader Alan Kaplan explains the role of these brilliant red berries in the winter food chain.
By Alan Kaplan
Wintering birds in our area often depend on the fruits of native and exotic (ornamental) berry plants to sustain them. Three common fruit eaters are American Robin, Cedar Waxwing, and Hermit Thrush.
In the 1970s, ornithologist Stephen Bailey looked at how these birds use berries in winter and how they interact with each other. (He was a graduate student at U.C. Berkeley at the time.) He found that toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) was the most important source of berries for robins, thrushes and waxwings, though they also make use of other berry plants on the university’s campus, such as cotoneaster, privet, pyracantha, holly and juniper.
Low in protein and calories, berries offer limited nutritional value, especially to small birds who need to consume their body weight in food each day to survive the winter. For example, a bird would need to consume 3 ounces of (dried) toyon berries to get the same 331 calories that could be had with only 2 ounces of sunflower seeds. Nevertheless, if you’re a wild bird you take what you can get!
Cedar Waxwing with toyon berries by Evleen Anderson
Bailey found that he could learn a lot about bird behavior by watching them tackle a berried bush. Each of the three species he studied — American Robin, Cedar Waxwing, and Hermit Thrush — had a different strategy of getting its fill. Each competed with the others and none could exclude the others altogether.
The large American Robin throws its weight around, dominating the other birds when defending a rich bush of berries against individual Hermit Thrushes or a small number of Cedar Waxwings. Cedar Waxwings, in turn, overwhelm the defense of robins with their large numbers, making up with flocking what they lack in fierceness.
Both the robins and waxwings prefer to perch and pluck at berries within reach, and spend about 16 minutes at a time doing that. Robins take five berries during that time, and cedar waxwings take three. A robin might eat its weight in berries in a day (about 3 ounces), filling and emptying its crop three times per hour.…

By Ilana DeBare
The 76th annual Oakland Christmas Bird Count began with a chilly dawn outside and ended with a warm crowd inside.
Over 270 people signed up for the Oakland count on Sunday, December 18, which last year had more participants in the field than any other CBC in the world.
Participants enjoyed crisp, clear skies, while navigating around patches of frost on the grass and black ice on some roads. Afterwards, they gathered in Berkeley for the annual compilation dinner with summaries from most of the 30 count circles, ably emceed by compilers Bob Lewis and Dave Quady.
The preliminary total (with not all teams reporting yet) was 178 species, similar to last year’s total of 179. However, the number of individual birds seemed to be down, possibly due to the cold weather.
“We had very few birds. I think they were frozen to the branches,” reported Douglas Vaughan, who co-led the Tilden Park North count team.
San Leandro Bay count team, dressed for the cold / Photo by Rick Lewis
American Kestrel at San Pablo Reservoir by Pamela Llewellyn
Red Fox on the golf course near San Leandro Bay by Rick Lewis
The Best Bird of the count was awarded to a Wilson’s Warbler sighted on Bay Farm Island.
Dave Quady reported that:

Other nice finds included a Brant at Pt. Isabel, single Red-necked Grebes off Oakland’s Estuary Park and in San Leandro Bay, single Common Gallinules on Bay Farm Island and on Lafayette Reservoir, Snowy Plovers on Alameda, nice numbers of Surfbirds off Emeryville, a Lesser Yellowlegs at Arrowhead Marsh, adult Bald Eagles seen over three areas, single Say’s Phoebes in residential areas of Berkeley and Oakland, a Tree Swallow over Briones Reservoir, a House Wren at Upper San Leandro Reservoir, a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher in Tilden RP, and a Swamp Sparrow at the San Pablo Reservoir boat launch.

The sighting of 25 Western Snowy Plovers on Crown Beach in Alameda was particularly gratifying. In 2014, Golden Gate Bird Alliance worked with the East Bay Regional Park District to erect educational signage and cordon off a section of beach where a few of those threatened shorebirds had taken to roosting. Based on the number during the count, clearly the efforts to provide them with a safe roosting spot are paying off!
Counting in the U.C. Botanical Garden / Photo by Ilana DeBare
House Wren at Point Isabel by Alan Krakauer
One benefit of counting at Sequoyah Country Club is a ride on the golf carts / Photo by Pat Bacchetti
Sadly, the count turned up no Tricolored Blackbirds — the third year in a row this species has been absent.…

By Ilana DeBare

The Burrowing Owls of Cesar Chavez Park are beloved by Berkeley residents and park visitors. More than that, they’re listed as a Species of Special Concern in California due to their dwindling habitat and numbers.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Berkeley’s owl lovers were jolted by some tragic news — the one Burrowing Owl spotted in the park this year was found dead on a park bench.

A passerby managed to photograph the owl and shared the photo with Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s dedicated group of volunteer Burrowing Owl docents. But by the time GGBA learned of the death, the body was gone and so no one was able to conduct a necropsy to determine its cause of death.

“We are all very saddened by the tragic loss of our single Burrowing Owl in CCP this winter season,”  docent coordinator Della Dash wrote in an email to the group, which has been monitoring and educating people about the owls since 2009. “We are trying to piece together what happened. But without the remains it will be impossible to know what really happened, unless someone from the public comes forward to report what occurred.”

The dead Burrowing Owl on a park bench

One possibility is that the owl may have been attacked by an off-leash dog, and left on the bench by its owner or by another park visitor. Along with helping people spot the owls through a scope, the docents spend a lot of their time trying to educate dog owners to keep their pets leashed when outside the park’s designated off-leash area.

Other possibilities are that the owl was the victim of a larger raptor, a feral cat, or some other predator. But the upshot is, without a body to analyze, we will not be able to pinpoint a certain cause of death.

The loss of a single owl is more significant than it might seem. Cesar Chavez Park has long harbored a small population of Burrowing Owls that spend the winter in ground squirrel burrows and then fly elsewhere to breed. Several years ago, one Cesar Chavez owl was documented by leg bands nesting as far away as Idaho, where it fledged three clutches of young.

The Burrowing Owl that was found dead over Thanksgiving weekend / Photo by Miya Lucas The Burrowing Owl that was found dead over Thanksgiving weekend / Photo by Doug Donaldson

But the park’s wintering owl population has dwindled, possibly due to California’s drought.…