Wingbeat Blog

​I’m just back from teaching bird language in the tropical jungles of Ecuador and the Galapagos. You know what? The same sounds that birds here in California have taught us to listen for also work to understand bird language on the Equator and in the Amazon.
 
For example, listening to the rather friendly Galapagos Flycatcher, you can understand who’s looking for a mate and who’s just making casual conversation in the same way you can understand flycatchers here in the United States. You may not be able to speak Spanish when you head south, but you can learn …

My experience at SFBBO for the last five months has been one I will never forget. It was my first time in California and my first time working with birds along the Pacific Flyaway. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed counting birds with SFBBO and getting the chance to experience seeing the sheer abundance of birds in the area.

​As a Waterbird Intern, I’ve accomplished many tasks to benefit other staff at SFBBO, volunteers, and future waterbird interns. Along with monitoring waterbird use in the South Bay’s salt ponds, I designed a new system for monitoring historic colonial waterbird nesting sites, contributed to the annual salt pond report, and participated in the annual shorebird survey. Most recently, I’ve worked on a project to help answer the question “How can island design help promote breeding colonies of declining waterbirds, …

I’m very grateful to have spent the last six months as a part of SFBBO’s Waterbird Team. Prior to joining SFBBO, I had no experience working with birds and am amazed by how much I have learned in what seems like such a short amount of time. The majority of my time has been spent conducting salt pond surveys and learning the waterbirds of the Bay Area, but I have also had the opportunity to develop other skills that will help me as I move forward with my career. I helped generate maps and graphs …

​California Least Terns were once abundant along the Pacific Coast from Monterey Bay to the tip of Baja California. But once people began to flock to the California coast in the late 1800’s, their population began a steep decline.As colonial ground nesting seabirds, Least Terns are highly vulnerable for a number of reasons. Their primary breeding habitat, coastal sand dunes, have been largely developed, and those that have not often host large numbers of beachgoers. Least Terns are very sensitive to human disturbance, and thus few suitable breeding sites remain. Where they do still breed, they face high levels of egg and chick predation, especially from predators such as corvids, gulls, …

​SFBBO has been intensively monitoring Snowy Plovers in the South Bay since 2003, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and CA Department of Fish and Wildlife acquired large tracts of former salt production ponds and began managing them for wildlife. During that time, the South Bay Snowy Plover population has significantly increased, in large part due to management actions designed specifically to provide them with quality breeding habitat. However, Snowy Plover populations still face many challenges to recovery, especially predation from a diverse group of species, including corvids, gulls, raptors, and mammals. Since 2018, SFBBO has attempted to improve …

Those of us who read to or with children tend to be word people as well as bird people. A recent picture book from Canada recalls “An Exaltation of Larks” as it presents a dozen bird species and the group names associated with their flight styles. In Hawks Kettle, Puffins Wheel, And Other Poems of Birds in Flight, Susan Vande Griek offers brief, free-verse poems about each bird, followed by a short statement about its style of behavior when flying, fishing, diving, or protecting itself. Crows, for example, “mob” intruders or threats; Bald Eagles “cartwheel” during their courting flight; Northern Gannets “plunge-dive” when fishing. Mark Hoffman’s large, boldly stylized illustrations add visual impact to the descriptions and extend the book’s reach to young listeners. This is a book likely to spark …

​Oilapalooza is an annual convention put on by the organization OWCN, the Oiled Wildlife Care Network. This year, on October 16th and 17th, I got the pleasure to attend my first Oilapalooza in Eureka.  It was also my first time in Eureka. As a San Jose resident, it was lovely to enjoy such a lush environment for a couple days. 

OWCN partners with local organizations like SFBBO to train and provide volunteers for potential oil spills. Oilapalooza is a good way to meet everyone in the OWCN team, learn more about oil spills …

Thanks to great participation from all of our staff, voluntees, and SFBBO community, we reached our goal to raise $30,000 through our 2019 California Fall Challenge (CFC)! 

We also had a great Annual Membership Meeting on Oct. 27! Thank you to our great guest speaker Dorian Anderson, to our t-shirt designer Julie Ho, to volunteer photographer Rachel Podlishevsky of Pro Bono Photo, and to all of our event volunteers that day! Read more below for highlights! 

Early in September I spent a week on Hog Island, Maine, where Audubon runs summer camps and research projects. Among many fascinating stories and observations, we visited Eastern Egg Rock and heard the story of biologist Steve Kress’s restoration of the Atlantic Puffin population exterminated in the 19th century by hunters of meat, eggs and feathers. Kress describes this project in moving detail in his 2015 book, Project Puffin; The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock (Yale University Press). ​But there’s …

​Cette année, pour l’été, j’ai décidé de faire quelque chose de complètement différent. C’est alors que j’ai pris mon courage à deux mains et que je me suis envolée pour les Etats-Unis toute seule. J’avais pour principal objectif d’améliorer mon anglais mais étant passionnée depuis toujours par tout ce qui a un  rapport avec la nature, je me suis vite mise à la recherche d’une association ou d’un organisme dans lequel je pouvais être bénévole. Trouver cet organisme me tenait vraiment à cœur car c’était un moyen pour moi d’approfondir mes connaissances en biologie mais aussi de faire quelque chose que j’aimais vraiment tout en pratiquant mon anglais.

​Grâce à l’intermédiaire du Dr. Ainley, j’ai eu l’extraordinaire chance d’être bénévole à la San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory (SFBBO). J’ai ainsi eu l’occasion de travailler sur différents projets tels que Snowy Plovers avec Ben Pearl et Landbird …