By Ilana DeBare

Birding helps us notice little wonders that we might otherwise take for granted — the California Towhee pair hopping in our backyard, never far from each other, or the Red-tailed Hawk regally surveying its world from a freeway sign over our traffic-clogged commute.

But sometimes even birders get complacent and take things for granted. “Another hawk, another towhee.” At that point photography can shake us up and make us look at things freshly again.

The Extraordinary Beauty of Birds: Designs, Patterns and Details (Prestel Publishing, 2016) is a new coffee-table book of photographs of close-up images of feathers, nests, eggs, and skins from the ornithology collection of the Royal Ontario Museum. Photographer Deborah Samuel selected 135 pictures of species ranging from the familiar (Mourning Dove, Wild Turkey) to the exotic (Superb Bird-of-Paradise), and Royal Ontario Museum ornithologist Mark Peck provided short, interesting nuggets of information on each one.

Superb Lyrebird by Deborah Samuel

My favorite images in the book were those of feathers. We never get close looks at feathers in the field, and so photos like Samuel’s show patterns and structures that we otherwise might never see. They let us view familiar birds in a whole new way. You can look at these images as breathtaking geometric art, or you can study them more literally as examples of bird anatomy. The Mourning Dove wing feathers are so regular and smooth they almost resemble twill fabric. The red tips of a Cedar Waxwing feather do indeed look like the drops of molten wax that inspired their name.

Mourning Dove by Deborah Samuel Cedar Waxwing by Deborah Samuel

I was less happy with the images of skins, or dead birds. They made me sad. We have access to so many wonderful photos of living birds — including many by Golden Gate Bird Alliance members, including the photos we feature each year in our Birds of the Bay Area wall calendar — that I didn’t feel like the skin photos offered anything new. And I would much rather look at a photo of a live Tree Swallow than a dead one.

Samuel’s photographs of nests brought to mind another wonderful set of nest photos — by our own member Sharon Beals, author of Nests: Fifty Nests and the Birds that Built Them. Like Samuel, Beals photographed nests from a museum collection against a black background. But Beals’s nests are lit more brightly and bring out the colors, contrasting textures, and beauty of the nests much more vividly.…

Editor’s Note: Sea-blite is an endangered shoreline plant that had not been seen in the Bay Area since the 1950s — until it was recently re-introduced at Pier 94, the onetime dump site owned by the Port of San Francisco that Golden Gate Bird Alliance is restoring as wildlife habitat. The following is an excerpt from an article on sea-blite in the current issue of Bay Nature magazine. Click here to read the full article. 
By Eric Simons
To get to the exceedingly rare plant called California sea-blite you go down to the east shore of San Francisco on an unmarked industrial road, past warehouses and jumbled rail lines. Cement plant rock-crushers roar, grinding Canadian gravel to fuel the city’s construction boom. A black tanker rests on a weed-lined rail spur, its side stamped in white: INEDIBLE TALLOW. A concrete road divider marks the end of the industrial area, and then in the shadow of the rock piles the waves sigh over a small crescent marsh with a view of the Bay Bridge and Oakland.
On a sandy rise about 10 feet from the water’s edge sprouts what looks like a plantation of waist-high green pipe cleaners. Over these, the freelance coastal ecologist Peter Baye pauses. This is one of only three small populations of endangered, once-extirpated sea-blite (Suaeda californica) around San Francisco Bay….
Peter Baye inspecting sea-blite seeds at Pier 94 / Photo by Eric Simons
Baye wears jeans, wire-rim glasses, and a gray wool beanie in the style favored by the Cousteaus. A former staff scientist at both the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he is considered one of the leading architects of coastal conservation in Northern California….
Twenty years ago Baye latched onto an anonymous plant that had been extinct in the San Francisco Bay for decades and, in the face of overwhelming bureaucratic and public indifference, has worked doggedly to bring it back. Peter Baye saw something bigger in the case of the sea-blite. Today, from the mud at our feet, spring the spiky green tendrils of a defiant attack on marsh idolatry—and on the way we think about endangered species.

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California sea-blite thrives in the narrow strip of ecotone sandy beach on the bay edge of tidal marshes. In Southern California’s Morro Bay, the only other place it lives, it is a climber of fences, driftwood, and dunes.…

By Ilana DeBare
Golden Gate Bird Alliance is for the birds. But not JUST for the birds.
This month, we were delighted to see results from our advocacy on behalf of a colony of harbor seals in Alameda.
Harbor seals — five to six feet long, with spotted coats in a variety of colors — spend about half their time on land and half in the water. “Hauling out” onto land allows them to rest and to warm up from the cold Bay waters, which is particularly important when they are molting. Harbor seals are social with each other but shy of humans. They usually gather in much smaller groups than California sea lions, the “celebrity” pinnipeds that delight tourists at San Francisco’s Pier 39.
At Alameda Point, harbor seals had been hauling out for years onto an old wooden dock between Encinal Beach and the U.S.S. Hornet. Golden Gate Bird Alliance members often spotted 6-12 seals resting on the dock. One one occasion, there were 33 seals on the dock at once!
Last year, though, the haul-out faced imminent destruction when the Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) negotiated a lease with Alameda city officials to build its new headquarters with an adjacent ferry maintenance terminal there.
Harbor seals on old dilapidated dock / Photo by Richard Bangert
GGBA members and seal fans spoke up at the Alameda City Council hearing when the lease was up for consideration. We pointed out that harbor seal habitat is protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and recommended that the city require WETA to provide a suitable replacement haul-out nearby under the guidance of a competent marine biologist.
Surprised to learn about the seal population and its fan club, the City Council placed a rider on the lease agreement that required $100,000 in escrow for mitigating the project’s impacts on seals.
With input from GGBA, WETA hired a veteran marine biologist to identify a good location and design a special haul-out that would meet the seals’ needs. Seal advocates met with the biologist to scout locations and provide input on a haul-out design for Alameda’s waters.  Last month, a new floating platform — a concrete platform with a long, wide ramp resting on buoyant materials — was installed.
The floating platform was initially placed just next to the old dock on June 22. Both structures were left in place for a short while to acclimate the seals to the platform’s presence.…

By Ilana DeBare
In 2015, our Eco-Education program in Richmond added a component on Bird-Friendly Schools, where elementary school students enhanced their schoolyards with nest boxes and native plants.
This year, we expanded the nest box program to nearby park lands!
Fourth graders from Montalvin, Stege, and Lake Elementary Schools built twelve wooden nest boxes and installed them in nearby Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, where our Eco-Ed field trips introduce them to creek ecosystems. We designed the nest boxes for Western Bluebirds and crossed our fingers that a pair or two might show up.
We were not just pleasantly surprised. We were blown away when seven out of the twelve boxes were occupied… by four different species!
The student-built boxes attracted families of Ash-throated Flycatchers, House Wrens, and Tree Swallows, as well as Western Bluebirds.
Girls from Bayview Elementary with box that the flycatchers used / Photo by Anthony DeCicco
Nesting pair of Ash-throated Flycatchers / Photo by Miya Lucas
Ash-throated flycatcher with dragonfly / Photo by Miya Lucas
Looking down on newly-hatched Ash-throated Flycatcher chicks / Photo by Anthony DeCicco
In addition, two of the schoolyard nest boxes installed in 2015 drew Western Bluebird and Tree Swallow families this year. The nest box at Lake Elementary School even hosted two bluebird broods in one season. “The children were totally thrilled and proud,” Anthony said.
The broods in the Wildcat Canyon boxes hatched too late in the school year for the children to see them. But Anthony returned to monitor the boxes and took photos to share with classes next year.
Girls from Stege Elementary erecting the box that Western Bluebirds used / Photo by Anthony DeCicco
Female Western Bluebird near the nest box / Photo by Miya Lucas
Bluebirds (about nine days old) inside box erected by the girls / Photo by Anthony DeCicco
We also plan to expand the nest box program to our Eco-Ed schools in Oakland and San Francisco next year — with boxes targeted for Knowland Park in Oakland and Glen Canyon Park in San Francisco.
“It’s absolutely thrilling to know that some simple actions can create new generations of resident and migratory birds,” Anthony said.
 

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Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s Eco-Education program provides hands-on nature education to ten Title I (low-income) elementary schools in Oakland, Richmond, and San Francisco. Since its start in 1999, Eco-Ed has served over 15,000 students and family members. Want to get involved?…