Birding News & Inspiration from Golden Gate Audubon
By Ilana DeBare
If this blog has been a little quiet for the past couple of weeks, it’s because we’ve been spending a lot of time on the (annoying, frustrating, necessary) administrative details of our annual Birdathon, which runs throughout the month of April.
But here’s the payoff for all that administrative scutwork — time in the field for Birdathon participants!
Jerry Tin…
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By Verne Nelson
Yesterday I saw two crows perform the mating ritual. As I discovered later on the Internet, apparently this is rarely observed because it is only done at bond formation and the bond lasts for life.
It happened in a parking lot. I was sitting on a bench in view of it when I heard odd but crow-like sounds. Can’t remember the sound, however when I looked I saw the male standing over a h…
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By Jack Dumbacher
What iconic north American bird used to be the most abundant bird species on earth, but is definitely not on your life list? The Passenger Pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius. But if Bay Area innovators Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan have their way, you may be able to see them again, live in feathered form.
Extinction – the end of a gene pool – is regarded as the final step from which there …
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By Glenn Stewart
At this moment, thousands of people are nervously watching the falcon nest camera atop the PG&E headquarters building at 77 Beale Street in downtown San Francisco. The female Peregrine Falcon nesting there since 2008 has disappeared and a new female has moved in to the territory.
All Peregrine Falcons look similar but not exactly alike. Variations in plumage on the head and neck mak…
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By Ilana DeBare
As residents of San Francisco and the East Bay, we in Golden Gate Audubon are all pretty much urban birders.
But David Lindo is The Urban Birder.
A native of London, Lindo has built a career around extolling the wonder of birding in cities. He’s done books, TV shows, tours and writes a blog called (of course) The Urban Birder.
“I’m all about trying to engage people who haven’t declared …
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Editor’s Note: Golden Gate Audubon member Alan Krakauer is studying Greater Sage-Grouse behavior in Wyoming. A longer version of this post appears on his blog.
By Alan Krakauer
One of North America’s most spectacular birds is also a species that not many people have seen — the Greater Sage-Grouse.
Given the spectacular plumage of a male Sage-Grouse in display, why are these birds so hard to se…
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By Ivan Samuels
When was the last time you went birding without binoculars? Most birders would consider this a bad idea for obvious reasons. But with experience, you would be surprised how many species you can identify without optics. Birding by ear, by definition, implies that you don’t even need to see the bird for species recognition. And in many cases, you already know the species you are wa…
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