By Ivan Samuels
When I realized that spring was upon us and Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s Birdathon season was fast approaching, a smoke signal was sent to fellow Miwok birders Peter Pyle and Brian Turner seeking consensus on the date for our big day. Okay, I admit that in fact I emailed them, but email would not be allowed on April 20, when for the fifth year in a row, we took the Miwok-style Birdathon challenge.
The rules and the route would be the same: no optics, car, bike, phone, watch, flashlight, etc. Relying on our collective birding experience and the help of a robust spring chorus, we would bird West Marin by foot, and by kayak in Bolinas Lagoon. With this unique challenge we would explore the diversity of habitats present within a small geographical area to ask the question: How many species might the Miwok Indians detect in a single day without using any modern aids?
Birds and mudflats of Bolinas Lagoon / Photo by Ilana DeBare
April 20, while a bit later than past years, was chosen mostly due to tides. A high tide around midday is critical for the kayak component of our count. We realized one result of this choice at dawn, when besides the haunting cries of Spotted Owls we immediately added Swainson’s Thrush to the list, a first. It seems that in past years, we were just a few days too early for this beautiful songster.
From there, the list grew rapidly and predictably; we have started to learn the best spots for site-faithful species that are on territory each year in the same places. Less predictable highlights also delighted the team – a Merlin persistently harassing a Crow (yes, usually the other way around), a skulking Lincoln’s Sparrow at the sewage ponds, White-throated Sparrow near Pine Gulch, flyover Pileated Woodpecker, and even a Rufous Hummingbird.
Lincoln’s Sparrow / Photo by Bob Lewis
Ivan Samuels — NOT taken during the Miwork Birdathon, since Miwoks didn’t have cameras!
How well we timed the tide in Bolinas Lagoon is debatable as we spent considerable time walking our kayaks through mud. And while the ducks had largely departed, this part of the day added many water birds to our list.
Perched on the bluffs above Agate Beach, we stared and strained our eyes at Duxbury Reef and beyond. A gray sky all day, it was also dead calm and the lack of wind made for an extraordinarily peaceful moment.…

By Maureen Lahiff
Have you ever seen an albatross? Do you want to have the pleasure of spotting their distinctive profile, tilting and soaring above the wave crests, flying without flapping? Articles about the physics of albatross flight are still being published in the 21st century, but you don’t have to master the physics to appreciate the poetry. Do you want to see shearwaters perform their graceful ballet?
Then you must go sea-birding.
There’s a great variety of birds that spend most of their lives on the open ocean, some never venturing further in than the continental shelf.
We’re fortunate in the Bay Area to have access to good day-long pelagic birding trips. (Pelagic comes from the Greek word for sea, pelagos.) I usually do one or two a year, with August to October being the months I consider most rewarding for a beginning sea birder.
My recommendation for a first trip is to go out from Monterey Bay. Because of the submarine canyon that extends out from Moss Landing, there is deep, cold water relatively close to shore. The cold water upwellings bring food that attracts pelagic birds, dolphins and whales. At its deepest, the canyon bottom is almost 12,000 feet below the water’s surface. You’ll see wildlife off and on all throughout the trip. There are also great trips out of Half Moon Bay. I was thrilled, and privileged, to see a pair of Marbled Murrelets swimming in the ocean on a trip that went south along the coast from Half Moon Bay to look for them.
Laysan Albatross by Glen Tepke
Black-footed Albatross by Glen Tepke
Red-necked Phalarope by Glen Tepke
If the weather and wind cooperate, pelagic trips go out past the continental shelf, to where the albatross live and Red and Red-necked Phalaropes, shearwaters, and the elusive petrels and storm-petrels spend the winter or migrate through.

The Farallon Islands

The Farallon Islands are a destination for many pelagic birding trips, and for Oceanic Society whale-watching trips in the summer and fall. I think that anyone who loves the Bay Area and its natural history should not only learn about but also see the Farallones.
Late July and early August are prime times for viewing birds, as the young of burrow-nesting birds such as Tufted Puffins will be fledging and the adults will still have colorful plumage before they molt. Many of the birds that nest on the Farallones are colonial nesters, since they don’t have to defend a territory to protect their food sources.…

By Ilana DeBare
The rocky oceanfront near San Francisco’s Sutro Baths is a key nesting spot for shorebirds such as Black Oystercatchers and Brandt’s Cormorants. So longtime birder Alan Hopkins was dismayed last January when he started seeing recreational drones buzzing along that section of shore.
Sam Schuchat had been excited to see a pair of Western Gulls nesting on a ledge across from his office at the California Coastal Conservancy in downtown Oakland in June. Then a drone swooped by and frightened the parent gulls off their nest.
Drones and birds: At this point such unplanned encounters are still an anomaly. But as the commercial and recreational use of drones grows, so will the potential for them to disrupt and endanger wildlife.
Drones — pilotless aircraft that often resemble mini-helicopters — are spreading. The Federal Aviation Authority is finalizing rules this year that will allow the widespread use of commercial, non-military drones. As many as 10,000 to 30,000 commercial drones could be in the air by 2020, used for everything from scientific research and police surveillance to bridge repairs and package delivery. Many of the companies making drones are based in the Bay Area, tapping the engineering know-how and financing of Silicon Valley.
While it’s good that the FAA is developing rules to govern drone use, the proposed rules do not address the potential impacts on wildlife.
And the FAA’s oversight does not include recreational drones used by hobbyists – probably the kind sighted by Hopkins and Schuchat.
In most cases, a single scare from a passing drone isn’t likely to harm a bird. In the incident with the Oakland gull nest, the parent birds returned to the nest after the drone passed and successfully hatched some chicks.
Western Gull and chicks at Oakland nest site that was disturbed by a drone / Photo by Sam Schuchat
But repetition raises the stakes.
Parent birds may abandon a nest if they’re disturbed repeatedly. Even one disturbance can leave their chicks temporarily vulnerable to predators. And flushing birds while they’re roosting or feeding makes it harder for them to build up the energy reserves for successful breeding and migration.
Many bird species today are already under severe pressure from loss of habitat and climate change. They will find it even harder to survive these challenges if their rest and feeding is constantly being interrupted by drones.
Drone sighted by Alan Hopkins over Sutro Baths / Photo by Alan Hopkins
Drone near Sutro Baths in January 2015 / Photo by Alan Hopkins
Black Oystercatcher, a species that relies on rocky waterfront like the area around Sutro Baths for nesting / Photo by Rick Lewis
No major conservation group has so far launched a campaign about drones.…

Note: This is the sixth 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
The Texas Coast is one of the two most famous “magnets” for spring migrants in the United States. (Magee Marsh near Toledo, Ohio, is the other.)
Therefore, it was crucial for Lani to be successful in reaching her Big Year Goal of 600 bird species that she identify as many special species as possible during our two weeks in Texas.
To Lani’s extreme good fortune, our close birding friend, whom we call “Birder Bob”, volunteered to be Lani’s unofficial bird guide in Texas — and what an exceptional job he did. Bob Hirt is an excellent birder in the field, and in addition, he spends an amazing amount of time preparing for a bird trip by reading guides such as the ABA Guide to Bird-finding on the Texas Coast in detail. He made numerous notations for further review, checked maps and directions, and reviewed field marks and songs of the many Target Birds Lani needed to add to her Big Year List.
Bob is dogged in tracking down a particular Target Species. He and I had seen both Baird’s and White-rumped Sandpipers (both somewhat difficult to see in Texas) in a partially flooded, plowed field with well over 1,000 other sandpipers, mainly Dunlin and Short-billed Dowitchers. But they were needles in a haystack, with Lani unable to get decent identification views before most of the flock suddenly flew away. We stopped at many other fields with sandpipers without luck. Finally, two days later at the tail end of a large thunderstorm, Bob suddenly pulled a U-turn on a highway on the Bolivar Peninsula to check a short, grassy field where sandpipers had been pushed down by the heavy rain.  Sure enough, out among the several hundred waders of about ten species, he spotted both White-rumped and Baird’s Sandpipers, and Lani had very good scope views.
White-rumped Sandpipers / Photo by Rick Elis-simpson (Creative Commons)
Baird’s Sandpiper / Photo by Dominic Sherony (Creative Commons)
Incidentally, “Birder Bob” Hirt is currently the president of Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society (for the second time) and some years ago was president of Golden Gate Bird Alliance. He participates as an area leader for both the Oakland and San Francisco Christmas Bird Counts and is involved in various bird conservation efforts, but most of all he just loves to go out birding — and is an amazing birder and leader.…

By Dominik Mosur
Imagine a complex of salt, brackish and freshwater marshes and associated upland covering hundreds of thousands of acres. Then picture it reduced by 90 percent, with the lost areas converted into modern humans’ idea of development. This is the story of San Francisco Bay. A visitor to Heron’s Head Park in southeastern San Francisco can — with a little patience and focus — transport themselves back a couple of hundred years in the past and observe a tiny slice of what would have once been all around us.
Heron’s Head Park had its genesis in the early 1970s, when the Port of San Francisco started trucking landfill to India Basin to create a new shipping terminal. The terminal was never built, and for a while there was talk of building a new S.F.-Oakland bridge at the site. But that never happened either and, in the meantime, aquatic plants took root and grew into a vibrant salt marsh. In 1993, Golden Gate Bird Alliance successfully petitioned the Port to preserve and enhance the area as a wetland – leading to the second largest wetland restoration project in the city, after Crissy Field.
Heron’s Head Park trail / Photo by Bob Gunderson
Spotted Sandpiper / Photo by Bob Gunderson
A number of agencies contributed to restoration of the area during the 1990s, including the S.F. Public Utilities Commission and the California Coastal Conservancy. The Port removed over 5,000 tons of excess concrete, built a tidal channel to increase water circulation, and added amenities such as a fishing pier and walking paths.
In 1999, the area officially became 23-acre Heron’s Head Park, named for its shape when viewed from above. The resulting tidal marsh and upland has matured into one of the prime bird habitats in the city of San Francisco.
Heron’s Head Park viewed from the air – can you see how it got its name?
View of Heron’s Head Park from a kite camera / Photo by Charles Benton
This became most obvious with Ridgway’s Rails (formerly California Clapper Rails), a federally-listed endangered species. The first Ridgway’s Rail ever documented at the site was reported in 2010. The next summer, two Ridgway’s Rail chicks were discovered there.
This breeding success appeared to be short-lived, however, and only a single Ridgway’s Rail is thought to remain at the site as of 2015. Habitat restoration can only go so far and re-colonizations like the return of Ridgway’s Rails to Heron’s Head face tremendous odds against long-term success.…