By David Assmann
At 8:45 a.m. on Saturday November 21st, 29 enthusiastic birders boarded the double-decker River Dolphin at the Berkeley Marina for a full day of birding on San Francisco Bay with Golden Gate Bird Alliance and Dolphin Charters. It was sunny, and the Bay was flat without any whitecaps.
Heading out of the dock, we got good looks at a number of Black Oystercatchers and a Black Turnstone. Shortly after leaving the dock, a Black Scoter flew in front of the boat, a harbinger of the day’s potential. While we saw hundreds of Surf Scoters on the trip, seeing a Black Scoter in the Bay is always special, since this winter resident sea duck is normally found in the Pacific Ocean.
Much more amazing than the Black Scoter was our second notable sighting of the day – not a bird, but a Northern Fur Seal, floating a little more than a mile from shore. It was in a classic fur seal jug handle pose – the hindflippers resting on top of a foreflipper out of the water. This apparently healthy young seal was miles away from its usual habitat. Northern Fur Seals are normally strictly pelagic, and only use a few offshore islands, like the Farallon Islands, for breeding and pupping.
Northern Fur Seal – a Bay rarity, by David Assmann
Northern Fur Seals were common before the arrival of Europeans on the West Coast. In the middens at the Emeryville Shell Mounds, small numbers of fur seal bones have been found dating to between 700 BC and 1300 AD. However, fur seals were coveted by Europeans for their fur, and they were almost totally wiped out by hunters in the late 1800s off the coast of California.
A small population was discovered in 1968 on San Miguel Island (the westernmost of the Channel Islands). A few of those seals made their way to the Farallones and in 1996, for the first time in more than a century, a fur seal was born on the Farallones. Since then, this population has increased to more than 1,000 seals. However, despite being protected, fur seal populations are still declining worldwide, and the species is listed as vulnerable under the Endangered Species Act.
After taking long looks at the Northern Fur Seal (allowing photographers to take multiple pictures), the River Dolphin slowly made its way north along the east side of the San Francisco Bay.…

Note: This is the ninth 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
When Lani and I returned from Arizona in early August, we knew that was the last place where she could expect to see a large number of new bird species (50) in a single area in a relatively short time, so our general plan moving ahead was instead to see as many new Target Birds as possible in California over the next two and a half months. Staying in California was necessary because we’d spent so much time travelling during the first six months of 2016: Lani had promised to spend more time at her job as a store manager during the second half of the year.
As the person in charge of strategic planning for Lani’s Big Year, I set myself three tasks in preparing for this block of time in our home state. The first was to locate every possible bird species that regularly occurs in California, even the rare ones that are difficult to see. The next was to be ready to chase after rare and vagrant species that periodically stray to California, which meant constantly monitoring Rare Bird Reports, mainly by checking the Sialia Birding Lists Digest listserv, as often as every hour or two.
The third task — potentially quite productive — was scheduling pelagic trips on the Pacific Ocean to see the numerous bird species that spend most of their lives at sea. However, there was one Big Problem: Lani has an inner ear condition that makes her far more susceptible to sea-sickness than a normal person. In fact, one medical expert had previously advised Lani never to go on boat trips.
Just the same, Lani had the intuition (or guts) to give it a try. We decided to start with a pelagic trip out of Ventura, just south of Santa Barbara, and to combine that with a separate trip to Santa Cruz Island and a longer driving trip with our close birding friend Jesse Grantham.
To maximize our birding possibilities, on the trip down to Ventura we stopped at the Montecito home of our friend Lynn Scarlett to look for a relatively difficult-to-see species that we had previously missed in South Florida in March — a Scaly-breasted Munia, formerly known as a Nutmeg Mannikin.…

By Ilana DeBare

Looking for holiday gifts that will tickle the tail feathers of the birders in your life? Here are some ideas that go beyond the usual binoculars, bird feeders, and field guides. We admit a bias toward buying locally, so we’ve included items by Bay Area artisans wherever possible.

For the field

Binocular harness. Give the gift of a happy neck! A harness can reduce the neck stress of wearing binoculars and hold them in place with less bumping around. Nearly every major optics company produces a harness; here’s one sold by the American Birding Association for $22. Prices range from around $12 to $50.

Bird song CD. Turn a tedious daily commute into improved birding skills – with a birdsong CD or smartphone app! Golden Gate Bird Alliance birding-by-ear instructor Denise Wight recommends Bird Songs of California ($24.99), one of many regional and North American bird song CDs produced by Cornell’s Macauley Library.   You can also find a wide selection of bird song CDs at the Online Nature Mall. For reviews of various bird song apps, see this article on the Cornell web site.

Rotating backpack. We haven’t tried this yet, but it looks intriguing: A daypack with a pouch that rotates from back to front, allowing easy access to your binoculars or camera. Made by Mindshift and available from REI ($199) and other outdoor retailers.

Rotating backpack by Mindshift

 

For the home

Bird letterpress calendar

Letterpress desk calendar. Calendars can be lovely works of art, even if many of us track appointments by smart phone these days. Take the small desktop bird calendar produced by Berkeley artist Rigel Stuhmiller. Printed by hand on an antique letterpress, the 4×5-inch pages come in a plastic case that turns into a display stand. $25, with discounts if you buy five or more.

Calendar cover – Black-necked Stilt and chicks

Birds of the Bay Area photo calendar. Brighten your wall with inspiring images of birds from Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s 2018 Birds of the SF Bay Area photo calendar. With images by over thirty of the Bay Area’s most talented wildlife photographers, the calendar will provide a bright spot of beauty on even the dreariest February day. Just $20, with proceeds benefitting GGBA’s conservation and education programs. 

Woodpecker door knocker. Hear a tap-tap from your visitors rather than a doorbell! This charming Pileated Woodpecker knocker is hand-painted and carved in pine, and sold by Massachusetts Audubon for $32.95.…

By Cindy Margulis

In a major victory for Altamont Pass birds, a wind company that has killed outrageous numbers of birds in the Altamont area announced that it is shutting down its 828-turbine wind farm, effective November 1.

Golden Gate Bird Alliance – together with other Audubon chapters and the S.F. Bay Sierra Club chapter  — mounted a major campaign last spring to stop Altamont Winds Inc. (AWI) from operating because of its notorious track record. AWI killed at least 67 Golden Eagles, 80 American Kestrels, 57 Burrowing Owls, and 172 Red-tailed Hawks in a recent 10-year period.

Unashamed of the scale of the mortality it had caused, AWI pled with Alameda County to renew its operating permit for another three years. To our chagrin, we did not prevail: we lost by a heart-breaking 3:2 vote of the Board of Supervisors.

But that setback has now given way to a very significant victory.

“The reduction of avian impacts was a primary factor that influenced our decision to discontinue operating our Altamont wind farms,” AWI wrote in an email to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Golden Eagle, one of the species that has suffered the most severe losses at Altamont. Photo by Davor Desancic

More than a decade of advocacy

The roots of this welcome news about AWI go back more than a decade.

In 2004, Golden Gate Bird Alliance and other Bay Area Audubon chapters filed a lawsuit demanding that Alameda County stop allowing wind energy facilities to destroy the public’s wildlife resources. GGBA supports wind power, but believes wind farms must be built and managed in a way that doesn’t decimate bird populations.

Both Alameda County and the three other wind companies operating in the Alameda portion of Altamont Pass ultimately agreed to a settlement with us. That pivotal Settlement Agreement would spur wind firms to phase out operations of their old-fashioned turbines. Instead, they’d install fewer, more modern turbines capable of producing energy far more efficiently with much less impact on birds – a process called repowering.

As part of that Settlement Agreement, the County and operators agreed to reduce mortality at their wind farms by at least 50 percent (according to an independent monitoring regime) and develop substantive habitat conservation plans in order to help bird populations recover.

But AWI backed out of the settlement negotiations at the last minute. The company continually delayed on repowering. Instead, AWI sought multiple permit extensions over a period of years to continue operating its entire fleet of old, deadly turbines while its competitors began decommissioning theirs.…