Editor’s Note: The San Francisco Chronicle ran an excellent story this weekend on San Francisco’s Snowy Plovers, which we are reprinting here in case you missed it. Our only quibble is with their description of longtime GGBA stalwart Dan Murphy as a… “hobby birder!” That’s kind of like describing Stephen Curry as an “adequate basketball player.”  (Wink.) Click here to view the original story with the Chronicle’s plover photos.
By Lizzie Johnson
Tucked among the dunes of Ocean Beach, dozens of white-breasted shorebirds roost. And this year, their numbers have quadrupled.
The sandy shores of the Crissy Field Wildlife Protection Area and Ocean Beach are a stopping-point for the Western snowy plover, a 6-inch shorebird with dark patches on its back. The average count at the bird’s overwintering ground is usually in the mid-20s. But this January, National Park Service workers counted as many as 104 plovers in a single day.
That’s a record number since the Park Service began observing and monitoring the population in 1994, a year after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the species as threatened. The snowy plover population on the West Coast — with 85 percent in California, and some in Oregon and Washington — has dwindled to 2,100 individuals, and they remain threatened by habitat loss, predation and human population growth.
Adult male Western Snowy Plover / Photo by Jerry Ting
Local number grows
“It’s really exciting that we have so many of these birds out there at the western edge of San Francisco,” said Bill Merkle, wildlife ecologist for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. “The last couple of years, the local population has been increasing, especially this year. It is likely because the birds had good breeding years.”
But local numbers aren’t indicative of an overall snowy plover growth trend. The population has remained steady, largely because of habitat protection and education, said Andrea Jones, director of bird conservation for Audubon California.
“The population hasn’t been increasing or decreasing as a general trend,” Jones said. “That is both good and bad. There is a ton that goes into protecting these birds in their nesting habitats. At the same time, the population isn’t getting to where it needs to be.”
It has been tough for the species to recover because the snowy plover breeds and overwinters in different places, said Cindy Margulis, executive director of the Golden Gate Bird Alliance. The birds breed in coastal dune habitats in areas like Monterey and the Point Reyes National Seashore, and then rest in San Francisco during July through April.…

By Ilana DeBare
The East Bay Regional Park District board made a welcome decision on Tuesday to shut down the Chabot Gun Club, which has been leaching toxic lead into the watershed of Lake Chabot.
But the board, apparently trying to placate gun owners, gave the club a full year to shut down – six months more than was recommended by park district staff, and far more time than is necessary.
“It’s a sign of progress that the gun range’s days are now finally numbered,’ said Golden Gate Bird Alliance Director Cindy Margulis.  “However, it’s regrettable that the District’s Board is effectively allowing this public health menace to continue for an entire year.”
The gun range’s lease expired in January 2015 and the EBRPD board granted it an extension until January 2016, then another extension through the end of this month. With this week’s vote, the range can continue operating through March 2017 but then must close.
Park neighbors, park users, and conservation groups including GGBA and Sierra Club have been urging the district to close the range because of its toxic lead pollution and noise issues.
Debris at Chabot Gun Club / Photo by gritphilm (Creative Commons)
Male Bald Eagle at Lake Chabot / Photo by Mary Malec
Lead was not commonly seen as a health danger when the range opened in 1963, but today it is well documented as causing anemia, brain damage, neurological disorders, kidney damage, reproductive disorders in humans as well as wildlife. In addition to being a popular site for hiking and picnicking, and a home to many wild species including Bald Eagles, Lake Chabot is an emergency drinking water source for the East Bay.
The cost of cleaning up past lead pollution from the gun range is estimated at between $2 million and $20 million. Each additional year of shooting will cost at least $200,000 to clean up – costs that will fall upon the park district and the East Bay taxpayers who support it.
“We had been asking them to shut down in under six months,” said Pam Young, chair of GGBA’s East Bay Conservation Committee. “Those previous extensions provided plenty of time for the club to make plans for closure. The longer it goes on, the greater the cost and the greater the harm.”
Both Young and Margulis testified at the EBRPD hearing yesterday, and GGBA board members emailed the park district board this week pressing for a final and speedy closure.…

Note: This is the final installment in a series of 11 blog posts by GGBA member George Peyton about his other half Lani Rumbaoa’s effort to see over 600 bird species in the Lower 48 states in 2015. Lani finished the year with a total of 641 species on her Big Year list!

By George Peyton

When Lani and I were birding on the King Ranch in South Texas in early November 2015, looking for a Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, a difficult-to-see bird species, we ran into Brandon Reo, who was also doing a 2015 Big Year. By that time he had already seen 644 species in the Lower 48 States, while Lani had then only recorded 620.

I asked Brandon what was the secret to his Big Year success, and he promptly responded: “Unlimited time and money.” He went on to indicate that he was the CEO and owner of a successful company in New Jersey, and while he continued to manage it, he was able to leave work for birding at any time. Furthermore, he had the money to be able to fly immediately to any sightings of rare birds needed for his Big Year list. He pointed out that he had flown twice from New Jersey to Texas in the past month alone, each time to chase after just one rare species to add to his list.

That is definitely not the way it worked for Lani and me. But it is true that Lani had arranged to be away from her work as a store manager for up to half of the year, and we actually birded outside of the San Francisco Bay Area — 15 states in addition to California — for almost a full six months of the year. Also 2015 was without question by far the most expensive year ever for us, due to the high cost of air travel, rental cars, lodging, and food, as well as other expenses such as bird guiding fees related to Lani’s Big Year of Birding.

While someone could undertake a localized Big Year effort – such as trying to see the maximum number of species in a specific county  — without major additional expense or time off from work, any serious effort to carry out a Big Year in North America or the Lower 48 States as Lani did would require taking major time off from work and spending at least $25,000 to $30,000.…

By Ilana DeBare
Amidst all the injustice in our world, every so often there’s something that is amazingly, happily, unarguably right.
Like Bob Lewis being awarded the 2016 Chandler Robbins Education/Conservation Award by the American Birding Association.
One of three prestigious national awards announced by the ABA last week, the Chandler Robbins Award goes to someone who has made significant contributions to the education of birders or to conservation.
And Bob – a Berkeley resident and Golden Gate Bird Alliance board member who has been at the heart of our adult education program for more than 20 years – totally fits the bill.
Bob started teaching a Birds of the Bay Area class with Rusty Scalf at the Albany Adult School in 1993. That single class grew into Audubon’s current rich array of more than 15 birding classes – everything from Beginning Birding, to Birding by Ear, North American Owls, Birds of the Sierra, Master Birding, and Migrant Treasure Hunting.
Black Phoebe landing on a rock by Bob Lewis
“We expanded the Birds of the Bay Area class to 40 but were still turning 15 to 20 people away each session,” Bob recalled. “So we got a few other people to start teaching. We started classes on Bird Migration and other subjects. I put together a Beginning Birding class based on a little book by Sibley on how to look at birds. I taught it the first year, then gave it to Eddie Bartley who taught it, and then passed it on to Anne Hoff who teaches it today.”
This year marks the 23^rd year that Bob and Rusty have taught Birds of the Bay Area – invariably filling all 40 slots, for a total of more than 2200 students enrolled since it started!
(Data note: The number of individuals taking that class is actually slightly less than 2,200, since some people enjoy it so much they take it multiple times.)
One of Bob’s most notable innovations was creation of our Master Birding class, which is co-sponsored with California Academy of Sciences and co-taught with Eddie Bartley and Jack Dumbacher.
Bob, Eddie, and Jack launched the class in 2013 – a rigorous year-long education that includes keeping an ongoing journal of a birding “patch,” research, presentations, and community service, as well as classroom sessions and field trips.
Common Loon feeding young in British Columbia, by Bob Lewis
 
Bob (left) leads a class field trip to Coyote Hills in 2013, by Ilana DeBare
Because of Bob’s vision, the class was designed to produce not just better birders but future leaders for the birding and conservation community.…

By Bonnie Brown

When I heard about the Waterbird Docent Program on Alcatraz last year, I knew it was the volunteer opportunity for me. I have swum from Alcatraz to San Francisco many times for fun and have often seen birds during those swims. Actually, swimming in San Francisco Bay was one of the ways I became interested in birding. The other was a volunteer trip I took to Tanzania years ago, where we saw so many colorful, exotic, and beautiful birds. I was just amazed and it stuck with me.

A friend and I signed up for the 2015 Master Birding class offered by Golden Gate Bird Alliance and California Academy of Sciences. It’s a year-long program and was a fantastic learning experience. One of the requirements was to put in 100 volunteer hours over a two-year period. Volunteering is fun and if you like birds, I can’t think of a better place to volunteer than Alcatraz, where you can help visitors from all over the world learn a little about the bird life.

Alcatraz National Park is a large and important breeding colony for several different egret, heron, and seabird species including Western Gulls. The island is home to the San Francisco Bay’s only Brandt’s Cormorant colony and one of its most important Black-crowned Night-heron colonies.   You can get up close and personal with the birds in their rookeries, especially the Snowy Egrets. Nesting season runs from April through August. It’s an awesome time to visit and observe avian natural history.

An almost National Geographic moment with Snowy Egrets on Alcatraz, by Bonnie Brown

How does one get involved? Well, first you reach out to the Docent Coordinator, then you attend a mandatory and very interesting eight-hour training on the Rock in the springtime. Finally you commit to approximately eight hours of volunteering each month. The Docent Coordinator is Ed Ryken, edwbear@earthlink.net.

Volunteers sign up using a group Yahoo calendar, and newcomers can choose to pair up with experienced volunteers.  The National Park Service is friendly, accommodating, and very appreciative of volunteers. You get access to the staff quarters and kitchen. All equipment is available free to the volunteers – scope, tripod, binoculars, radios, brochures, counters, and the carts to lug all this equipment up and down the hills of Alcatraz. You’re also outfitted with official clothing, as demonstrated in the picture below.

Fashionable docent attire!

The Alcatraz docent program has three goals: 1) increase awareness for Alcatraz waterbirds, 2) generate appreciation for nesting waterbird species through interpretation, and 3) reduce potential human impact on the birds and their habitat.…