Editor’s: This article is excerpted from the latest issue of Bay Nature magazine. To read the complete article, click here.

By Kim Todd

Lobos Creek trailhead in the Presidio looks wild. Flushed orange monkey flower, sage, and coyote bush spill over re-created sand dunes. Nearby, the creek empties into the ocean. But close your eyes. A water truck pulls up to a stop sign with a mechanical whine. Car engines growl, foghorns moan, a distant airplane whirs. The noise, which never stops even though it’s barely 7 a.m., makes it clear you’re in the middle of the city.

In the parking lot, a white-crowned sparrow perches at the top of an evergreen tree next to a pickup truck and sings, launching a quick patter: whistle, buzz, two-part trill, and a scattering of notes. It’s music familiar to city dwellers, even if they couldn’t name it. The song is key to the white crown’s survival, helping him attract a mate and defend the territory around his nest, warning off other males with his vocal vigor. But the notes are almost drowned out as a bus sighs to a halt. Thanks to recent restoration efforts, the bird is surrounded by plants, such as lupine, that evolved here over centuries, along with the sparrow. But there is no restoring the silence, and the noise grows year by year. What will it take for white crowns like this one to survive in this new soundscape? What will it take to be heard?

Biologists David Luther and Kate Gentry record white-crowned sparrow songs and calls at the Lobos Creek dunes in the Presidio. Photo: Sebastian Kennerknech.

Down the boardwalk, David Luther, a quiet-voiced, rusty-haired biologist from George Mason University in Virginia, is trying to find out.

“In the past ten years or so, there has been mounting evidence of how human noise is affecting these birds,” says Luther. Not just birds, he adds, but other animals, too. Studies in the developing field of “acoustic ecology” show whales, crickets, and frogs altering their behavior in response to man-made sounds. While some flee the cacophony, others adjust their internal clocks. Along a river near the Madrid airport, nightingales and European goldfinches sing earlier in the morning before the roar of the planes starts up. In Sheffield, England, robin redbreasts in noise-cluttered areas have started to sing at night. The whole “dawn chorus” has moved away from dawn.…

Editor’s Note: Thirteen years ago, Bruce Mast began writing our monthly Observations column, a roundup of rare and unusual bird sightings throughout the Bay Area. Since then a lot has changed in the world, including the rise of online resources such as listservs and eBird for tracking rare bird sightings. With his final 2015 column, Bruce is retiring Observations and moving on to other forms of involvement with GGBA. (For instance, he will be leading a reprise of his fabulous Birds & Wine in Sonoma County field trip in April for Birdathon 2016!)

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank Bruce for his dedicated and meticulous work on Observations all these years. Thanks to his writing, many of us could enjoy rare sightings vicariously even during times when we weren’t able to get out in the field. His past columns and annual data summaries will remain archived and available on our web site. Following is a note from Bruce and his final column for 2015.

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Observations, October 16 – December 31, 2015

By Bruce Mast

This column represents the final rare bird roundup for 2015. It also represents the final Observations column, period, at least in this format. After 13 years and 115 columns, your loyal correspondent is ready to retire. Conversations with the Gull editorial board led to the conclusion that the rise of eBird has rendered this format of systematically documenting rarities obsolete. So with the start of the new year, it’s time to shift my energies to field trips and an occasional blog post of topical interest. I hope to see you in the field! 

Ducks to Herons

Tufted Ducks visited MRN on Nov. 27 at Abbotts Lagoon, PRNS (MD) and on Dec. 19-25 along the east shore of Tomales Bay (SC; ER, NR). The region’s 3rd Tufted Duck turned up Dec. 17 at Clifton Court Forebay, CC (AL, RB). A seawatch along the Great Highway in SF on Oct. 24 was treated to a Yellow-billed Loon (Gavia adamsii) flying south (PS).

Birders aboard a repositioning cruise located a Laysan Albatross in both SF and SM waters on Dec. 1 (mob). Short-tailed Shearwaters came within seawatching distance of shore on Nov. 1 at Moss Beach, SM (RT) and on Dec. 4 at Bodega Head, SON (SC).

There have been at least 8 Brown Boobies along our coast this fall and Boobies continued to be reported regularly along the SM and SF coasts.…

Note: This is the tenth in a series of occasional 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.

By George Peyton

Some of our friends thought we were a bit crazy to fly to Duluth, Minnesota — one of the coldest, snowiest parts of the United States — right after Christmas. However, it turned out to be a big success, allowing Lani to finish her Big Year of Birding with a total of 641 bird species seen during 2015 in the Lower 48 States, more than many birders have seen in their entire lifetimes.

We left home for San Francisco International Airport at 5 a.m. on December 26, our Christmas dinner barely digested, for our early morning flight to Duluth, and when we arrived late afternoon, it had been snowing all day, about 10 inches on the ground.

The next morning we met our excellent birding guide, Kim Risen, at 6 a.m. and headed out driving through the snow to the famous Sax-Zim Bog area to start our birding for the the day around dawn. At our first stop Kim checked the outside temperature – two degrees above zero. We were pleased that Kim had just put new snow tires on his SUV the previous day.

Kim Risen (left), Lani Rumbaoa, and George Peyton at Sax-Zim Bog

Due to the snow and the subfreezing temperatures, we did much of our birding from inside of Kim’s SUV. The first good sighting was a Great Gray Owl in the early morning light – not new for Lani, since she had seen one at the same general location in June, but still impressive.

Kim had our list of Target Birds that would be new for Lani’s Big Year List. The first addition was Hoary Redpoll, found in a flock of Common Redpolls, instantly recognizable as a plump puffball, much lighter-plumaged than its companions.

Common (left) and Hoary Redpolls, by Seabrooke Leckie (Flickr Creative Commons)

That day Kim located three more new bird species for Lani’s Big Year List — Pine Grosbeak, Northern Shrike, and Snow Bunting. The new snowstorm had covered up most of the normal grassy feeding areas for Snow Bunting, but after substantial searching Kim located a flock of fourteen feeding right on the edge of the road. Every time that we approached too close, the bunting flock would fly away for a little over a minute but then return to the same spot, so we had great views.…

By Jane Turner Hart

This past spring and summer I had the chance to observe a remarkable period of a Black Oystercatcher’s life: the nesting, brooding, hatching, protecting, feeding, and fledging of its chicks in the exposed, rugged territory of the rocky intertidal zone along the Pacific Coast.

In February, Noreen Weeden of Golden Gate Bird Alliance emailed me about volunteering to help with a survey project undertaken by Audubon California and others. The purpose was to collect baseline data on the Black Oystercatcher population, with a focus on the breeding and fledging success of pairs along California’s coast. How many eggs were laid in the nest? How many chicks would successfully fledge from that nest this year? In recent years, biologists have become more aware of the very small population size of Black Oystercatchers, thought to be about 10,000-12,000 individuals globally. Data suggest that the survival rate of their young has been dropping; they appear to have low reproductive success. I was definitely interested.

In late April, I began to head out to Land’s End in San Francisco where Black Oystercatchers had been seen recently. 

View towards Land’s End, the Cliff House, and the rock islands from Ocean Beach.

My early observations were from the back deck of San Francisco’s Cliff House. With a scope, binoculars and a smallish 50x Canon Powershot SX50 HS, I set up in the south corner of the deck to look west at three offshore rocks, collectively referred to as Seal Rocks. The distance from the deck to the rocks was roughly 450 feet. 

The Seal Rocks: Cone Rock (left), Arch Rock (center), and Repose Rock (right).

In Mid-April, I spotted a group of Black Oystercatchers flying north over the Seal Rocks. They circled the three islands, and two birds dropped down and landed on a sunlit bed of black and golden mollusks and limpets on Repose Rock.

The two black/dusky birds were difficult to see, except for their blood-red bills moving against the dark shell background. They walked slowly around the carpet of invertebrates, poking and pulling meaty bits from the mollusks. One of them stepped down into a deep pool of tidal water on the ledge, dunked its head in the pool several times, leapt out, shook off the drops, and then found a spot to sit and preen contentedly for several minutes.

I soon learned that Repose Rock was the Black Oystercatchers’ go-to spot for successful foraging at low tide.…

By Krista Jordan

In late 2014, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and that’s when I saw it – a post by Golden Gate Bird Alliance for a Master Birder program, in partnership with the California Academy of Sciences. I had never heard of such a thing and was immediately intrigued. I had been birding in earnest for about two years at that point, and was really wanting to get to a “next level” but wasn’t quite sure what that would look like or how I would get there.

I quickly read the description and felt a rush. I had to do it. I can be impulsive but I hesitated as I read the requirements for the class. I really wanted to show up prepared and give it my all. Would I have enough time? Could I identify the requisite number of species by sight (100) and by ear (25)?

I slept on it for a night and the next day I printed out an ABA checklist and brought out my highlighter – 109 species by sight and 32 by sound. Not bad. I thought, “I can do this.”

My goals for taking the course were to:

1. See birds that I might not see otherwise, mostly because I lacked knowledge of when and where to find them.
2. Build my birding network by finding a group of people that are as nutty about birding as I am. (I might have been starting to annoy my non-birding friends.)
3. Get more involved in the Bay Area birding community through volunteering, advocacy, and conservation efforts. I had taken enough from the birds, it was time to give back!

What I got — and got to give — was so much more.

Master Birding class at Coyote Hills in March 2015, by Krista Jordan

Here are some course highlights:

The Instructors: You won’t find three expert birders who are more generous with their knowledge and time than Eddie Bartley, Jack Dumbacher, and Bob Lewis. Besides being approachable and kind-hearted, their passion for birds is positively contagious. I asked a lot of questions in the field (not all of them exactly smart) and was met with respect and kindness. Bring your curiosity and thirst for knowledge!

The California Academy of Sciences specimen collection: AMAZING! I have never had the opportunity to see museum specimens so at first it was a bit weird. Dead birds. Not for everyone.…