Beginning Birding class starts on May 8

Beginning Birding class starts on May 8

ByGGBA

Ever wonder what those little tweeting yellow guys are in your backyard? Now’s your chance to find out — in our spring Beginning Birding class.

With four evening classroom sessions and four Saturday morning field trips, this class is a perfect way to start learning about birds or to improve your existing birding skills.

Anna's Hummingbird / Photo by Rick Lewis

Instructor Anne Hoff will familiarize you with the tools of the trade — binoculars, field guides, scopes, and more. She’ll show you places to watch birds in the Bay Area, and help you learn to identify the birds of the bay and uplands. Singing, breeding birds in their most colorful plumage make spring a particularly inviting season for birdwatching. Class includes:

Four Wednesday evenings — 7 to 8:30 p.m. — May 8, 15, 22, 29

Four Saturday field trips — 8 to 10:30 a.m. — May 11,18, 25, and June 1

Cost: $85 for Golden Gate Bird Alliance members, $105 for non-members

This class will take place at the Golden Gate Bird Alliance office at 2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite G, in Berkeley (at Blake).

To register for Beginning Birding online, please click here. Class is limited to 15 participants; then there will be a waiting list in case any registrants drop out.

Questions? Email Ilana at idebare@goldengatebirdalliance.org.

 

Photo of Western Tanager on GGBA home page by Bob Lewis.…

Bird photo show to benefit GGBA

Bird photo show to benefit GGBA

ByGGBA

Treat yourself to a dose of avian inspiration with the beautiful bird photographs of Diana Rebman and Roseanne Smith!

Opening on Saturday April 13th with a reception from 7 to 9 p.m., the show will run through June 6th at Nielsen Arts, 1537 Solano Avenue in Berkeley.

Diana and Roseanne have generously offered to donate a portion of all their sales to Golden Gate Bird Alliance.

Please join us for the reception on April 13th. Or if you can’t make it that evening, stop by anytime between now and June 9th. More information is available at (510) 525-8968.

Keel-billed Toucan in Costa Rica photo by Diana Rebman.

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Become a Tern Watch volunteer

Become a Tern Watch volunteer

ByGGBA

Want a closer and more personal view of California Least Terns than most people in the world will ever have? Want to help protect this at-risk species? Become a Tern Watch volunteer!

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is offering four trainings in May and early June for people who want to help monitor the 2013 Least Tern nesting season at the old Alameda naval base.

Trainings will take place on Wednesday evenings May 1 and 29, and on Saturday mornings May 4 and June 1. (You only have to attend one session.)

Volunteers are required to attend a training session and put in three Tern Watch shifts of three hours each. You’ll be close enough to see courtship, aerial displays, mating, nesting, raising chicks to fledglings, feeding chicks and mates, and so much more.  Each volunteer is asked to record predator and Least Tern activities on US FWS forms.  It’s fun, easy, and you’ll learn a great deal about the Least Terns and predator species.

For more information, see the Tern Watch volunteer poster.

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Peter Pyle on Transpacific Migration

Peter Pyle on Transpacific Migration

ByGGBA

Join us on Thursday March 21 in Berkeley for a fascinating look at the wonders and risks of trans-Pacific migration, featuring wildlife biologist Peter Pyle.

Find out how Pacific Ocean migrants overcome the hardships and risks of long-distance travel over the inhospitable and food-deprived central Pacific. The great flights of Black-footed Albatrosses, which come 4,000 miles to California to get food for their chicks, will be a primary focus. His talk will also include Great White Sharks and other marine animals, and the over-water journeys of various shorebirds, land birds, insects, and bats. Peter will put all of this information into a conservation context.

For 24 years, Peter Pyle was a Farallon Island biologist, studying bird, bat, and butterfly migration as well as the habits of the Great White Shark. He currently works for the Institute for Bird Populations, where he researches changes in the abundance, distribution, and ecology of North and Latin American bird populations. He is also a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. In 2011 Peter had the fortune of describing a new bird species, Bryan’s Shearwater, and naming it after his grandfather.

Time: 7 pm for refreshments, 7:30 for program
Date: Thursday March 21
Cost: Free for GGBA members, $5 for non-members.
Place: Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda (between Solano and Marin in North Berkeley)
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Introducing PB & J Birders

Introducing PB & J Birders

ByGGBA

NOTE NEW DATE: Saturday March 30th

We’re delighted to launch a new quarterly series of free bird walks for families with children. Led by a dad and his two daughters (one of whom designed this great logo), the first PB&J Birder walk will take place at the Crissy Field Lagoon on Saturday March 30th.

Thanks to Tom McCarthy and his daughters Emma and Maire for helping create this program. You can get details on the Field Trips page of our web site. And if you’d like to be on an email list to receive announcements of future kids’ events, email Ilana at idebare@goldengatebirdalliance.org.…

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