2014 Oakland CBC — great day, no rain
By Ilana DeBare
The Bay Area’s welcome rainstorms let up for 24 hours on Sunday… just long enough for more than 200 birders to have a fabulous Oakland Christmas Bird Count.
Sunday December 14 marked the start of the 115th year of Audubon Christmas Bird Counts, and the 74th such count in Oakland.
Registration in advance came to 287 people, a new record for Oakland. Last year the Oakland count was the fourth largest in North America, and this year’s count is likely to be in the top five again.
With logistical planning that practically rivaled D-Day, count organizers Bob Lewis and Dave Quady sent 29 teams out into the field to tally birds on the bay and shoreline, on hilltops and in ravines, at cemeteries, college campuses, parking lots, city streets, and golf courses.
Then about 130 participants gathered to celebrate and compare notes over dinner at Northbrae Community Church in Berkeley.
The preliminary, incomplete tally was 176 species — short of the Oakland record of 183, but still a respectable total.
San Leandro Bay count team. Photo by Nancy Johnston.
Counting at Lake Merritt. Photo by Ilana DeBare
Lots of scaup but no Tufted Duck on Lake Merritt. Photo by Ilana DeBare
Notable this year were large numbers of Acorn Woodpeckers and Varied Thrushes, species that are not typically common in most of the Oakland count circle. The Tilden North count team spotted 74 Varied Thrushes, while Tilden South spotted 118!
“There were Acorn Woodpeckers all over,” count organizer Dave Quady said. “It’s probably due to some combination of a prolific breeding year and a shortage of acorns east of us” (where the birds are more typically found).
The count was featured in vivid news coverage by the San Francisco Chronicle, Contra Costa Times, and Channel 7.
It drew both longtime birders and people who were new to the CBC.
On the longtime end of things, the Merritt College team was made up of Anthony Fisher, his two brothers, and his nephew. The Fishers grew up in that neighborhood and used to bird there as kids when Campus Drive was a meadow rather than a subdivision.
“It was a rolling meadow above the quarry, with snags and Western Bluebirds nesting in them,” Fisher recalled.
Fisher family count team at Merritt College / Photo by Ilana DeBare
On the newer end of things, this was the first count for Susanna Kwan, who started birding last January and joined the Mills College count team.…