By Ilana DeBare

Hundreds of Golden Gate Bird Alliance members spoke out on behalf of the birds of Altamont Pass – but it wasn’t enough to stop the Alameda County Board of Supervisors from permitting three more years of unnecessary bird killings by a recalcitrant wind power company.

The Supervisors voted 3-2 on Tuesday to let Altamont Winds Inc. wait until 2018 to replace its deadly, 1980s-era turbines with newer models that produce energy far more efficiently while killing far fewer birds.

Supervisors Keith Carson and Wilma Chan cast the dissenting votes on behalf of wildlife and for safer, more efficient wind power. Both had clearly put careful thought and research into their decision. Golden Gate Bird Alliance sends a big thank you to Supervisors Carson and Chan!

But the three other supervisors fell under the sway of AWI owners and their investors.

The Boilermakers and Blacksmiths Union had invested workers’  pension funds in AWI, a non-public company, and apparently feared losing money if AWI were required to follow through on its prior commitments to shut down its old turbines this year. AWI and its union investors claimed they were defending “jobs” – even though repowering would bring hundreds of unionized jobs for skilled tradespeople and laborers, far more than the 40 people currently employed here by the company.

Hawk and turbine blade at Altamont / S. F. Chronicle photo by Michael Macor

In giving AWI its third “special deal” in ten years, the supervisors chose to ignore the recommendations of Golden Gate Bird Alliance and other Bay Area Audubon chapters, California Audubon, Sierra Club, Save Mount Diablo, the East Bay Regional Parks District, the county’s own East County Board of Zoning Adjustments, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement, and the California Attorney General’s office.

Even the San Francisco Chronicle had come out with a strongly-worded editorial this week headlined, “Alameda County cannot allow wind farm to continue killing birds.”

“We are incredibly disappointed that those three supervisors chose to disregard real scientific evidence, the economic interests of the county, and wildlife in this matter,” said Cindy Margulis, Executive Director of Golden Gate Bird Alliance.

AWI is the second-largest wind power company at Altamont, but the only one that has not made substantial progress toward repowering — even though it has had more time than its competitors to do so. In 2005, rather than join a lawsuit settlement with the other wind companies, AWI cut its own deal with the county to gradually phase out its old turbines.…

By Noreen Weeden
If you’re familiar with Golden Gate Bird Alliance, you’ve probably heard about our work restoring Pier 94 as habitat for wildlife on the southeastern San Francisco waterfront. You may have seen photos from our monthly volunteer work days, or you may have read lists of bird sightings there.
But birds aren’t the only winged creatures benefitting from our Pier 94 work!
On Saturday, April 4, we invited Liam O’Brien to join our group of 16 volunteers and introduce them to the butterflies of Pier 94.
Liam is a stage actor who about nine years ago became an enthusiastic and expert lepidopterist. An advocate for San Francisco’s butterflies, he works on the “Tigers on Market Street” project for Nature in the City and was the recipient of Bay Nature magazine’s 2014 Environmental Education Local Hero award.
Liam started by asking the volunteers if butterflies are pollinators. Contrary to many people’s assumptions, the answer is no!
Butterflies do drink nectar from flowering plants and fruit, with a tongue or proboscis that has evolved in length to take advantage of a specific plant. Unlikes bees with their short legs and body designed to efficiently collect, carry, and transfer pollen, butterflies are more like long-legged cranes with bodies that remain far from the pollen.
Rather than a pollinator, the butterfly’s role in its ecosystem is primarily as a food source. Butterflies have a short yet active life of just 10 to 12 days. The female typically lays 80 to 100 eggs. Eighty percent of all butterfly eggs are eaten by creatures crawling on the host plant. Then 80 percent of the larvae and pupae are parasitized by native wasps and flies. (Wasps and flies lay eggs inside the larvae, and the young eat their way out.) Finally, 80 percent of all the adults — the pretty, flying phase when we humans notice them — are eaten by a variety of birds, lizards, and even spiders.
San Francisco has 34 species of butterflies — a manageable number for experienced birders!  Two species are specific to the wetlands along the bay and can be seen at Pier 94.
Painted lady at Pier 94 / Photo by Liam O’Brien
During our April 4 work day, Liam grabbed his net and we followed slowly. The Western pygmy blue (Brephidium exile) butterfly associates with pickleweed. The sandhill skipper (Pilotes sabuleti) depends on salt grass.…

By George Peyton
South Texas is a great place to bird, particularly for a Big Year, since it has a number of bird species that are either difficult or impossible to find elsewhere in the United States, from easy-to-find birds like Green Jay or Plain Chachalaca to difficult-to-find species such as Hook-billed Kite.
As part of the Big Year being attempted by my better half Lani Rumbaoa, we spent ten full days birding South Texas in mid-February. We started by taking the Wharf Cat, a catamaran, from Rockport, with the primary goal of seeing Whooping Cranes.
The crew always includes a very knowledgeable birder — often the Captain — to point out the numerous birds seen during the four to five-hour cruise around Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. And because the Wharf Cat has an upper deck and is a very stable boat, Lani had great visibility, and with our own scope she was able to see six or seven family groups of Whooping Cranes, some quite close.
A very endangered species, Whooping Cranes rebounded from a low of just 15 individuals in the 1940s to the current population of about 600 birds, thanks to a heroic restoration effort that is still going on. The tallest bird in North America, Whooping Cranes are pure white with a dark red crescent on the face. They were absolutely magnificent to watch as they slowly stalked their prey, small crabs, in the Texas marshes.
The Wharf Cat, ready to look for Whooping Cranes / Photo by Lani Rumbaoa
The captain of the Wharf Cat with Lani. George, and a Whooping Crane (the white dot) in the distant background
Whooping Cranes at Aransas NWR / Photo by Dolovis
We spent most of the next day on a guided bird tour on the King Ranch led by Jim Sinclair, very tall (6 feet 8 inches) and very slim, with an Oklahoma/Texas drawl, and an excellent bird leader. Jim spent many years in the Navy and during a long stay in San Diego saw over 400 species in San Diego County alone — obviously an avid birder.
While we unfortunately could not go to the southern part of the King Ranch where the Ferruginous Pygmy Owl is found (that area was not opening up until approximately a month after we left), Jim tailored our birding to find new species for Lani’s Big Year List. He had the patience to spend over two hours driving the short grass strips on either side of the ranch roads to finally locate Lani’s top Target Species for the day, a Sprague’s Pipit, which is very difficult to find anywhere in the U.S.  …

By Mike Lynes

The Altamont Pass is a problem for birds that just won’t go away. So that makes it a problem for Audubon too – a problem that will come to a head next Tuesday March 24.

While significant progress has been made in reducing bird deaths in the Altamont Pass, one company, Altamont Winds, Inc. (AWI), is trying to extend its current permits to run some of the most dangerous, old-generation turbines for another three years until 2018. If approved, the project would kill approximately 1,900 birds, including 280 to 400 raptors and at least 11 to 16 Golden Eagles, 82 to 139 Burrowing Owls, 86 to 96 American Kestrels, and 55 to 87 Red-tailed Hawks.

Not surprisingly, the proposal is opposed by Audubon, Save Mount Diablo, the Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club, the East Bay Regional Park District, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the office of the California Attorney General. The project was initially rejected by the East County Board of Zoning Adjustments (EBZA) in February, but AWI appealed. The Alameda Board of Supervisors is scheduled to hear the issue on March 24, and seems poised to overturn the EBZA and approve the project.

AWI’s efforts to continue profiting from its old-generation turbines not only pose an unnecessarily high risk to birds, but they violate what has been Alameda County’s stated wind policy since at least 2005. At that time, the County and several wind companies settled litigation brought by five Audubon chapters – Golden Gate Bird Alliance, Santa Clara Valley Audubon, Marin Audubon, Ohlone Audubon, and Mt. Diablo Audubon—together with Californians for Renewable Energy (CaRE) and agreed to reduce bird deaths by 50 percent and expeditiously remove the most dangerous, old-generation turbines in the Altamont.

Golden Eagle, one of the species being killed by AWI’s outmoded turbines. Photo by Davor Desancic Wildlife biologists examine a dead bird at Altamont Pass in 2007 / Photo by Elizabeth Pepin/KQED

Removal of older turbines is one of the key strategies for making the Altamont Pass a productive site for renewable energy that does not unduly harm local bird populations. For decades, the old-generation turbines killed thousands of birds each year without mitigation. In the early 2000s, it became clear that to keep wind energy in the Altamont, the old turbines would need to be replaced with newer, safer turbines that were sited to minimize risk to birds, a process called “repowering.”…

By Bruce Mast

The composite checklist of native, non-introduced birds for all nine Bay Area Counties adds up to 549 species.*  A quick scan of the county checklists confirms a familiar pattern: species diversity is richest in the coastal counties.

Marin County, with its world-class vagrant traps at outer Point Reyes, leads the pack with a checklist of 481 species. San Francisco, though heavily urbanized, includes some great vagrant traps in the western part of town and lays claim to the vagrant super-magnet Farallon Islands, which puts it in respectable second place with 472 species. San Mateo and Sonoma Counties follow behind with 445 and 437 species respectively.

But birding a location with a long vagrant checklist doesn’t mean you will see many birds in the field. What if we exclude the vagrants and locally rare (i.e., less than annual) species and just focus on the regularly occurring birds? Even though Solano and Contra Costa offer access to some great Central Valley birds, the coastal counties still lead the way due to their unique habitats for gulls, alcids, rocky shorebirds, tube-noses, and diving ducks.

Among the coastal counties, Sonoma vaults into first place with 281 species, Marin and San Mateo drop to second and third place with 271 and 264 species, and San Francisco falls all the way to sixth place with just 243 species.

Sonoma County

So what’s so special about Sonoma? The short answer is the quality and diversity of habitat.

Southeastern Sonoma County includes the extensive Napa-Sonoma and Petaluma Marshes that extend well up the Petaluma River to Ellis Creek and Shollenberger Park. Ridgway’s and Black Rails are regular denizens, along with small numbers of Tundra Swans and Greater White-fronted, Snow, Ross’s, and Cackling Geese. Similar habitats in the bay-fronting counties to the south have been more heavily impacted by urbanization.

American Bittern at Shollenberger Park, by Don Bruschera Bell’s Sparrow along Pine Flat Road in Sonoma County, by Bruce Mast

 

Sonoma’s interior coast range offers dry upland habitats—oak savannah, gray pines, and chaparral–that are sparse or non-existent in the other coastal counties. With multiple peaks reaching above 3,000 feet, the Mayacama Mountains are a good place to find Poorwill, Purple Martin, Canyon Wren, California Thrasher, and Bell’s Sparrow. Lewis’s Woodpecker is generally more dependable in Sonoma County than the other coastal counties.

Along the coast, Sonoma offers forests of redwoods, pines, and douglas fir that extend all the way up the north coast into Canada.…