By Toni Mester

Berkeley old-timers remember when Cesar Chavez Park was a dump, the last of the active East Bay landfills. It would cost nothing to leave a truckload of trash on a smelly mound, surrounded by thousands of circling gulls. After the dump closed in 1983, the 90 acres on San Francisco Bay were capped and sealed and gradually transformed into a park with some of the most astounding views in the Bay Area.

The Park is also a treasure trove for birders, who can spot both land and water birds (over 150 species, according to eBird) from low hills and grass lands surrounded by the Bay to the north and west and the shallow tidal North Basin to the east. Golden Gate Bird Alliance hosts a docent program at the Burrowing Owl habitat, where if you’re lucky you can spot one of these rarely-seen birds during their winter sojourn.

Entering the park near the DoubleTree Hotel (where the road turns), you’ll find the North Basin on your right with a view of I-80 and the East Bay hills. During the winter, the most common water birds feeding here are scaups, buffleheads, ruddy ducks, grebes, coots, and egrets. Some of the ducks stay on during the summer, but most return to their northern homes at the end of March or early April. The usually calm waters serve as a migratory massing site, where thousands collect before taking off, bobbing about in rough chevron formation. In my years of walking the perimeter trail, I have only seen this astounding sight once.

Red-winged Blackbird by Martin Nicolaus

Just inland, the industrial stack of a methane flare station collects and burns the off-gassing from the landfill, which is still actively decomposing. Because the volume of gas has decreased, the old inefficient apparatus will be decommissioned this year and replaced with a more compact facility with a smaller stack, next to the current location.

About midway on the path, look for a bird ID plaque, showing photos of the most common birds. Further along at the northeast corner, the Burrowing Owl habitat usually attracts observers when the birds can be seen poking their heads out of a ground squirrel burrow, between November and March. These small owls – a California Species of Concern — are almost invisible because of their coloring, but a docent with a spotting scope can show you where to look.…

By Ilana DeBare 
Lou Ann Roth and her husband Scott heard some splashing last month outside their condo on the northwest shore of Alameda. When they went out on their deck to investigate, they saw a large bird frantically flapping in the water near a neighbor’s dock.
Looking more closely, they realized it was an Osprey entangled in fishing line.
“There was a bobber – a fishing tackle float, oval-shaped and white – attached to it,” said Lou Ann, who has lived in Alameda for ten years. “It was trying to get out of the water onto the dock and couldn’t do so. It was flapping and flapping.”
This Osprey faced an all-too-common threat: discarded plastic fishing line. Millions of tons of monofilament lines and nets litter the oceans, strangling or drowning water birds and marine mammals while taking up to 650 years to biodegrade.
Lou Ann and Scott could tell this was a bird in trouble. Scott called a local bird rescue group. Meanwhile, Lou Ann contacted their neighbor who owned the dock close to the Osprey, Nina Marie.
Nina had been rushing to leave for her job as a hairstylist but stopped. “I looked out the window and saw the bird drowning,” she said. “Its wings were up but its body was underwater. It kept bobbing down and trying to flap to come up.”
Nina Marie (left) and Scott and Lou Ann Roth with their rescue tools / Photo by Cindy Margulis
Lou Ann and Scott had been trying to rescue the Osprey with a small fishing net, but it wasn’t long enough to reach the bird. Nina brought a broom and heavy gloves: She had rescued a lot of injured animals as a child and knew the dangers of beaks and talons.
Nina used the broom to pull the bird closer to the dock. Scott used the net to gather the bird up and into a cardboard box. They saw that it wasn’t just tangled up with a single bobber – there were three sinkers plus a ten-inch-long fish attached to the line.
“Man, this bird was tangled up,” Nina said.
While Scott contained the bird’s head with the net, Nina used her haircutting skills to snip all the line off of the Osprey, working under its feathers and close to its body. Then they let the bird rest in the box to recover.
Osprey with fishing line on dock.…

By Bob Lewis
February is a great time to explore the refuges in the Central Valley, and Merced National Wildlife Refuge is especially interesting right now.  The Bay Area Birds class that I co-teach with Rusty Scalf finished up the quarter with a weekend visit.   A check with the ranger at the refuge revealed that there are 35,000 Snow and Ross’s Geese currently present.  The majority are Ross’s Geese, spending the winter in the corn fields grown on the refuge specifically to feed the waterfowl.  They’ll shortly depart for Northern Canada and their nesting grounds.  We had a chance to observe some White-fronted and Cackling Geese too, but their numbers are dwarfed by the white geese.
Mixed in with the geese are majestic Sandhill Cranes, mostly just taking advantage of the food in the fields, but a few are beginning to “dance,” bouncing on their long legs and flaring their wings – establishing or renewing pair bonds.  They’ll also soon be heading north to their nesting grounds.  Some of the Greater race nest in Sierra Valley, where our Birds of the Sierra class gets to observe the rusty-colored chicks with their parents.
Snow Geese by Bob Lewis
Sandhill Cranes by Bob Lewis
Sandhill Cranes by Bob Lewis
Not to be forgotten are striking White-faced Ibis.  They’re in their non-breeding plumage now, but in March they’ll get their white faces.  Even in their less striking plumage, the green iridescent wing coverts contrast with their red-brown body plumage, adding to the already notable image of a large bird with a decurved bill.  They feed along the marsh edges, probing for worms, insect larvae and snails.
White-faced Ibis by Bob Lewis
Ross’s and Snow Geese by Bob Lewis
Bushtit by Bob lewis
Add to the list raptors (including Swainson’s Hawk and Bald Eagle), ducks (all three species of teal) and  shorebirds (Wilson’s Snipe) all wintering in the refuge and a variety of residents like Marsh Wren, Bushtit and blackbirds and Merced Refuge is really worth a visit!
Our class list is on EBird at ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S21868063.
Directions and information about the refuge are at fws.gov/refuge/merced/.

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Bob Lewis, a Golden Gate Bird Alliance board member and chair of the Education Committee, will co-teach Birds of the Bay Area again in the fall. There are still spaces available in the first session of his Birds of the Sierra class, which takes place over a three-day period in June in the Sierra.…

Note: This is the second 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 
We flew to Boston on January 21 intending to look for wintering birds from the far north that would be difficult to see in other areas during Lani’s Big Year. As soon as we arrived in Boston around 9 p.m., we started hearing about a major snowstorm headed there, so that was always on our minds as we birded for the next four days. Not wanting to drive in snowy and icy conditions, we had fortunately arranged for local Boston area birders to take us out in their cars.
At 6 a.m. the next morning we were met by Wayne Petersen, a senior staff member at Massachusetts Audubon Society, driving his Prius.  (In fact, all three of our bird leaders in Boston drove a Prius. California is not the only state with the conservation ethic.) Wayne is not only an exceptional birder and guide, but somewhat of a legend in the Massachusetts birders’ world. He is in charge of the Important Bird Areas Program in that state and other major tasks, including recently managing 600 contributors to the Breeding Bird Atlas for Massachusetts as its Chief Editor. In addition to having led many international bird tours for Mass Audubon (he has just left for Tanzania), he was a bird guide for Field Guides Bird Tour Company for over 20 years.
All of this background showed in our day birding together. First, Wayne found three separate Snowy Owls for Lani while birding on Plum Island, perhaps the most famous birding location in eastern Massachusetts. This was a life bird for Lani, and absolutely gorgeous birds. In all, Wayne found 17 new Year Birds for Lani that day, including species not found in California like Razorbill and Black Guillemot. We were fortunate with cold clear weather all day.
Razorbill, one of the closest living relatives of the extinct Great Auk / Photo by Steve Garvie
While seeing birds is the priority in a day out birding, food is also important. Wayne introduced us to Bob’s Lobster for lunch, a favorite hangout for birders on Plum Island with delicious lobster rolls, and we finished off with excellent locally-made ice cream. As we drove back to Boston after dark, Wayne stopped at Prince Pizza north of Boston, a popular spot for birders to congregate for pizza and draft beer after a long day of birding.…

By Lisa Eileen Hern 
I can’t remember what year it was when I fell in love with Burrowing Owls, but I clearly remember being at Shoreline Park in Mountain View in the spring, and looking down at green grass with lots of yellow eyes peering up at me from holes in the ground. Owls, in the ground! Once I gazed further into those gorgeous eyes, I knew I was in love. I have since become a docent in Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s Burrowing Owl program in Cesar Chavez Park in Berkeley.
The GGBA program has only a small number of owls in its area – six in the winter of 2012-13, four last winter, and two this winter. So I was very interested when I heard about the large, successful Burrowing Owl conservation program being run by Santa Clara Valley Audubon in northern San Jose.
Burrowing Owls in San Jose / Photo courtesy of Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society
Burrowing Owl in San Jose / Photo courtesy of Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society
Josh McCluskey — one of the leads of the SCVAS owl program — gave a public lecture on January 21 about the 180-acre section of Regional Wastewater Facility buffer lands that they manage for Burrowing Owls in a partnership with the City of San Jose. SCVAS’s ultimate goal is to create, maintain and monitor an ideal owl habitat.
One of their tactics is to provide more burrows. Although Burrowing Owls traditionally adopt burrows made by other species such as squirrels, SCVAS has had great success with artificial burrows — attracting pairs that have produced an average of 4.8 chicks per year (versus about three for other Burrowing Owls in the area).
SCVAS also works to provide fruitful hunting habitat and plentiful prey for the owls by keeping the grass less then one meter high and maintaining an open area without trees but with lots of dirt mounds and rock piles.
Most importantly, they’re trying to limit predation. They set traps for skunks, which are the owls’ main predators. (Other predators include Prairie Falcons, Golden Eagles, hawks, and possums.)
Golden Eagle hunting for Burrowing Owls / Photo courtesy of Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society
SCVAS tries to track the owl population through banding, although this is hampered by the lack of a central repository for Burrowing Owl banding information. Many of the banded owls are never reported again.…