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.
 

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?…

Editor’s Note: Golden Gate Bird Alliance members may be familiar with Alvaro Jaramillo from the pelagic and international birding trips he leads through his business, Alvaro’s Adventures. But Alvaro, born in Chile, also writes the “Identify Yourself” feature for Bird Watcher’s Digest and authored the new American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of California. He will be featured in three events at the Monterey Bay Birding Festival in September. In preparation, Alvaro was interviewed by the festival’s Debbie Diersch. This interview is reprinted with permission from The Albatross, the newsletter of the Santa Cruz Bird Club.

Q: Alvaro, what do you want readers to know about you?
As far as birding goes, I’m different from some of the other people who are interested in bird ID and distribution because the main person I’m interested in reaching is the beginner or intermediate birder. It’s all about communicating this type of info to beginners/intermediate birders. I want them to know that it’s not all difficult or about trying to become skilled. When you put it in a way that makes it fun and simple, you don’t need to be a biologist to figure it out. I want to communicate to the every person.
As a young birder I was highly competitive. Let’s do a big day, keep a year list, but there came a time when it seemed empty. We have these wonderful birds, and it’s much richer than competition. Just enjoy the breeze, have a good dinner with friends, and make it the best it can be.
Alvaro Jaramillo on boat / Photo by Gail Stevens
Q: What do you find most fascinating about birds and birding?
It’s the most versatile and unending kind of endeavor you can get into. You can do everything else while you bird. You can even play tennis and bird at the same time. It adds to almost anything else you can do. Birds take you to places that are amazing. We go out on the bay and see killer whales as well as birds. You might not have gotten there if you weren’t going for the birds in the first place. I can’t imagine any other pastime you can have that is more fluid, diverse, and rich, and that adds another element to of life in this way.
Q: Why did you decide to write the American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of California and what makes it special?…

By Jack Dumbacher
Decades ago, I recall being told that birds can see incredibly “fast” – mostly from bird keepers who said that AC lighting (which flickers at ~120 flashes per second) appears as a flashing strobe to birds. But when I started teaching Ornithology, I was never able to find any definitive published evidence that birds do actually see fast, or how fast, or even what this might mean for how birds see the world.
Now a recent study published by a Swedish team (Boström et al. 2016) nicely shows how fast birds can see. In fact, the Pied Flycatchers of Europe can detect flickering light and dark cycles up to 145 Hz (or flashes per second) – about 40 Hz faster than any other known vertebrate.
This is called the “critical flicker-fusion frequency,” or CFF – the frequency at which a flickering light begins to appear as a steady light.
In the eye, each light-sensitive cell has to react to light, send a signal to the brain, and then refresh to be ready to receive the next signal. As long as a flashing light is slow enough, each cell can keep up, and detect both the dark and light periods, and send a uniform signal to the brain. But once the flashing rate exceeds the critical flicker-fusion frequency, then some cells drop behind and get out of sync, and soon a synchronized “steady” signal is generated from the eye.
This is why the flickering motion on a TV screen or movie projector is viewed by humans as steady motion – because the light is flickering faster than our critical flicker fusion frequency.
Flicker fusion frequencies for Collared (closed diamonds) and Pied Flycatchers (open squares). From PLoS One website. Averages are shown together with ranges for seven Collared and eight Pied Flycatchers tested repeatedly in different light intensities. Note that the speed of birds’ vision peaks in middle light intensities, when it is not too light and not too dark.
To measure birds’ ability, they did some simple experiments with captive birds. Each bird could see two LED lights – one randomly chosen to flicker, and the other with a steady light. Then they simply trained captive birds to find a prize (a peanut for Blue Tits, or a mealworm for Collared Flycatchers) if they looked in a jar placed under the flashing light.
They waited until the birds were well trained and could get the treat at least four out of five times.…