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.…

By Pauline Grant

When I returned recently from North Carolina with a stink bug loose in my suitcase, I did not immediately toss it out the window. I placed it under a jar on my kitchen counter. A few days later, I fed it a tiny piece of cracker and a few grains of sugar. (Surely bugs eat what we eat!) Each morning I would move the jar to check if it was still alive. After ten days under the jar, someone suggested I feed it a piece of leaf. Four weeks later it is still alive. What possessed me to want to observe the captured stink bug? Hanging out with kids in nature!

This fall I had the opportunity to volunteer with Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s Eco-Education program and to co-lead (with Eugenia Caldwell) a bird walk for children at Las Gallinas Storage Ponds in Marin. The exuberance of both these groups of children is clear reassurance that real life, physical life, is still far more exciting than screen life.

GGBA’s Eco-Education program provides nature-focused field trips and classroom activities to about 700 children from low-income elementary schools each year. I volunteered with the San Francisco part of the program, which includes field trips to GGBA’s shoreline habitat restoration site at Pier 94.

From 10 a.m. when the big yellow school bus dropped off twenty 4^th graders, until they left at 2:15 p.m., there was laughter, squealing, and continuous questions about the marine, plant, and bird life. Meanwhile, the Las Gallinas bird walk – which took place on a weekend and was open to the general public — lasted an extra thirty minutes due to the inquisitiveness of the young participants.

Eco-Education students learn to use binoculars at Pier 94. Photo by Pauline Grant. Anthony DeCicco helps Eco-Education students plant native plants at Pier 94, by Pauline Grant An Eco-Education volunteer and student at Pier 94, by Pauline Grant

The training to be a GGBA Eco-Education volunteer is brief – a single three-hour session at the site in San Francisco or the East Bay where you prefer to volunteer. Throughout the school year, one can commit as many or as few hours as one wants. Anthony DeCicco, the Youth Education Director for GGBA, provides the training in a very relaxed manner and offers a lot of tips for behavior management.

It’s important to note that many of the kids on these school field trips are unfamiliar with how to behave in a fragile natural environment because they have not visited one before.…

By Ilana DeBare

Bay Area residents will receive a sparkling nighttime gift this month when the Bay Lights art installation on the Bay Bridge goes live again permanently.

Bay Area birds are getting a gift too – a reduction in light pollution along the western span of the Bay Bridge.

This month, as an outgrowth of the Bay Lights rekindling, CalTrans replaced the old bulbs lighting the bridge roadway with new LED fixtures that are both more energy-efficient and more narrowly targeted on the traffic lanes.

The new LED fixtures are good for birds and wildlife in several ways:

• Much less nighttime light will spill over onto Bay waters, decreasing the disturbance to resting water birds and other marine life.
• Reduced glare from fixed lighting will be better for overhead migrating birds that rely on seeing the stars to navigate.
• Finally, greater energy efficiency means less of a contribution to climate change, a major threat to wildlife in coming decades.

The lighting improvements grew out of a year-long partnership between Golden Gate Bird Alliance, Caltrans, and Illuminate, the sponsor of the Bay Lights public art installation.

Bay Lights stretching from SF to Yerba Buena Island, by James Ewing Surf Scoter, one of many birds that rest and feed on the Bay waters, by Glen Tepke

“This is a great example of creative people from the public and private sector collaborating to do something wonderful for people and for wildlife in a way that’s a model for the rest of the country,” said Golden Gate Bird Alliance Executive Director Cindy Margulis.

“Our relationship with Audubon is proof positive that art and the environment can work together in big beautiful ways,” said Ben Davis, CEO and founder of Illuminate.

Bay Lights – a monumental, computer-driven display of moving lights on the cables of the Bay Bridge, between San Francisco and Yerba Buena Island – was first mounted in March 2013. Created by artist Leo Villareal, the project was originally planned as a temporary two-year installation and shut down in March 2015.

But public response was so enthusiastic that organizers raised $4 million to turn it into a permanent feature of the bridge, to be maintained by CalTrans for at least the next decade. On January 30, Bay Lights will be re-kindled as part of the festivities leading up to the Super Bowl.

Golden Gate Bird Alliance approached the Bay Lights organizers more than a year ago about the project’s potential impacts on wildlife.…