By Nancy Johnston

Birders quickly learn to use bird bills to help identify species. Bird tongues, if we could easily see them, would also be helpful in identifying species. This blog is to whet your tongue about bird tongues and highlight the diversity that evolution has brought to avian tongues.

First, most birds have pretty prosaic tongues. They look somewhat similar to ours but can have some interesting extra features. As shown in Figure 1, the tips can be fringed or split and the root of the tongue may have backward-facing barbs. It is not clear if the fraying or splitting helps in acquiring and eating food, but the backward-facing barbs are useful for moving food to the gullet. This is needed because birds don’t swallow the way we do. These tongues vary quite a bit in width, thickness, amount of fraying, barbs and their placement, etc. (Note: Drawings are not to scale.)

Figure 1: (A) Northern Mockingbird, (B) Say’s Phoebe, (C) American Kestrel, (D) Anna’s Hummingbird (partial), (E) Nuttall’s Woodpecker, (F) Acorn Woodpecker. Drawings by L.L. Gardner, 1925

Species such as woodpeckers and hummingbirds have more interesting tongues.  Most of these birds have tongues that can extend far outside their bill (Figure 2).  For these birds, the boney/cartilaginous apparatus that supports the tongue wraps around the skull under the skin, usually terminating in the right nostril (Figure 3).  Extending their tongues lets hummingbirds reach into flowers for nectar or lets woodpeckers get insects from crevices in trees.

In the case of woodpeckers (Figure 4), the tip of their tongue can also be barbed or covered in sticky fluid that helps them capture insects. Sapsuckers have shorter tongues with hair-like structures for gathering sap from trees.

Figure 2: Hummingbird with tongue extended and furled together. Photo by Bob Lewis, www.wingbeats.org.
Figure 3: Pictures of the tongue and the supporting apparatus (red). A: shows how the horns go around the skull and terminate in the right nostril, e.g., Northern Flicker. B: shows how the horns can go around the eye, e.g., picus. Modification of a picture from etc.usf.edu/clipart/ Figure 4: Red-bellied Woodpecker tongue tip showing the rear-facing barbs used for extracting larvae from trees. Photo by Chris Kargel, www.livingstonbirds.com/photos/red-bellied_woodpecker/

Birds that filter out food particles from mud and water have the most complicated-looking tongues.  Their tongues have papillae (barb-like or hair-like structures) of various sizes and shapes that help strain out food particles.…

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.…

By George Peyton
The longtime skipper of the North Boat, Ed Jepsen, was an excellent sailor and navigator, and even taught classes for the U.S. Coast Guard. However, one day many years ago, we sailed into a phenomenon that could have led to the death of Ed’s then-wife.
It was a clear and cold day for the Oakland Christmas Count, and the North Boat was headed north from the Bay Bridge paralleling the eastern shore of Treasure Island.
Ed’s wife loved the outdoors and birds and had come to love being out in the Jepsens’ boat. But by that time her health confined her to a wheelchair, where she was enjoying the expansive view from the back deck.
Suddenly, the prow of the North Boat lurched substantially upward into the air as we emerged from the calm waters behind Treasure Island and encountered a very strong rising tide coming into the Bay from the Golden Gate.
Scaup on SF Bay / Photo by U.S. Geological Survey
We all grabbed onto something to steady ourselves. But right away I noticed that the wheelchair did not have its brakes fully engaged and was rolling rapidly toward the rear of the boat — with Ms. Jepsen in it.
I remember jumping and grabbing the arm of the wheelchair. Fortunately one of our other bird spotters did likewise, just before it hit the back railing, where it could have thrown Ms. Jepsen out and into the water.
We could hardly believe what had happened and how fortunate we were that a tragedy had not occurred. Naturally our minds were at least temporarily off of counting birds.
Another extremely memorable North Boat experience took place on another cold, clear day that was quite windy. We had rounded the south side of Yerba Buena Island and passed under the Bay Bridge heading north on the San Francisco side, scanning the small rocky beaches at the base of the island’s steep cliffs for birds.
Yerba Buena Island, with Oakland and Alameda in the background and San Francisco across the bridge to the right
Suddenly, Pete White called out that he had seen something strange on the beach that looked a little like a human body. He asked Ed Jepsen to come about and get closer, so that we could better see what was on that small beach.
I ran over to the railing and, sure enough, my binoculars showed a dead body washed up on the beach.…

By Ilana DeBare

Breeding Birds of Solano County is a breeding bird atlas like no other breeding bird atlas you’ve ever seen.

With a glossy, photo-filled hardcover format and and a weight of over five pounds, it is as beautiful as any coffee-table art book produced by a museum.

Just published by Napa-Solano Audubon Society, the atlas would make a splendid holiday gift not just for birders but for anyone with an interest in California nature.

It provides descriptions of historic range, breeding behavior, and conservation status for 151 birds that nest in Solano County. It also offers 350 color photos by sixty Bay Area bird photographers, including 44 images by GGBA’s own board member and birding instructor Bob Lewis. And it has detailed color maps for each species, created by GGBA instructor and mapping professional Rusty Scalf.

Sample inside pages of Breeding Birds of Solano County Samples pages from Breeding Birds of Solano County Sample inside pages of Breeding Birds of Solano County

If you’re not familiar with the concept of a bird atlas, the concept originated in Britain in the late 1960s — a systematic guide to birds that nest in a particular area.

The idea spread to the U.S. and Canada. On the East Coast, breeding bird atlases often cover an entire state. In California, they typically cover one county. The past 30 years have seen publication of atlases for Alameda (2011), Contra Costa (2009), Santa Clara, and Marin counties, among others.

The Solano atlas had its genesis a quarter of a century ago when birder Robin Leong approached Napa-Solano Audubon Society to create a volume covering Solano County. But the group could only raise enough funds for a Napa atlas. They did field work from 1989 through 1993, and finally published the Napa volume in 2003.

Solano then got its turn. Volunteers – including some GGBA members like Dave Quady and John Luther — conducted field surveys from 2005 through 2010. Organizers were determined to avoid another ten-year lag between field work and publication, and so in early 2013 ornithologist Murray Berner started writing the species descriptions and editor Mike Rippey started compiling photos.

Kingfisher page

Then came the logistics of publishing, which ultimately led to a printer in, of all places, Italy.

“People who will bind and make books in the U.S. are a dying breed,” Berner said. “The board didn’t want to go to China, and the U.S.…

By David Assmann
Community gardens provide an easily accessible retreat from the concrete jungle of a city, even a city as scenic as San Francisco. What makes them even more idyllic is that they are filled with vibrant bird life. Fort Mason not only has a community garden open to the public, but is also one of the top birding hotspots in the city, with an eBird list of 180 species.
Situated on a bluff above the Bay, the key to Fort Mason’s diversity of bird life is its location and varied topography, providing a refuge for aquatic and land birds as well as migrants. One of the attractions of this birding hotspot is its compactness — upper Fort Mason, which is the main birding area, is only 68 acres in size, making it an easy place to bird, even if you have only an hour.
Fort Mason wasn’t always a hospitable site for birds. First reserved for the U.S. military in 1850 because of its strategic location, Fort Mason was the U.S. Army’s major West Coast shipping port until the end of the 1950s. More than 1.6 million members of the military traveled through Fort Mason on their way to the Pacific during World War II. What is now the Great Meadow was entirely covered by buildings until the 1970s, when Fort Mason became part of the first national urban park, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Fort Mason’s Great Meadow in the fog / Photo by David Assmann
Since I started birding, Fort Mason has become my guide for the changing of the seasons. It isn’t fall for me until the Red-Breasted Sapsucker returns from the Sierra at the end of September to take up residence for the winter at Fort Mason. I know winter has ended in late March when the same sapsucker spends a day roaming around Fort Mason instead of sticking to its adopted trees and then disappears, headed for the mountains.
Similarly, I don’t consider it winter until the Red-Breasted Mergansers swim in Aquatic Park in December. I know winter is drawing to a close when the Allen’s Hummingbirds show up in February. The first Western Kingbird migrating through marks spring for me. Summer begins when the resident Downy Woodpeckers and Pygmy Nuthatches start raising young. (Last year a pair of each raised their young in the same tree with nest holes less than a foot apart.)…