​“What kind of owl is that?” asks my young neighbor, listening to the soft “coo-COO-cooo-cooo” of a Mourning Dove and reminding me how little many of our children know about the birds around us. Dayna Lorentz, in the recent middle-grade novel Of a Feather, introduces two characters, a young Great Horned Owl and a middle grade girl, both struggling to find their places in the world under challenging conditions.  

​The owl, Second (named for his birth order, and taunted by his older sister, who has already fledged) is timid, slow in learning to hunt and ...

In this month's Wingbeat e-newsletter, visit our colonial waterbird site to see results from our 2020 surveys and learn about our phalarope research; read about a memorial gift that supports workshop scholarships for students from underserved communities; join our Spring 2021 Bird Photo Big Day; learn about our volunteer opportunities and the new Birding the Bay Trail brochure; celebrate a grant from Cargill to support outreach, plovers, and landbirds; welcome board members Deanna DeCasto, Karan Gathani, Sheri Scheldorf, and Debbie Wong; welcome back biologist Parker Kaye; thank landbird intern Hongyu Li; and get an update about our Birdy Hours and other events!

​It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that birding changed my life. I moved to San Francisco and ended up getting a job at Alcatraz Island, a National Park Site but also a bird sanctuary and colonial nesting site for hundreds of waterbirds.

I was working in visitor services and had never felt that parks and the outdoors were necessarily places that I belonged. I was born in Houston, Texas, to very poor teenage parents and I am Mexican-American. Growing up, I didn’t see myself in the people who were in these spaces.

​Working on Alcatraz changed that, when my first winter there a co-worker and I discovered a Peregrine Falcon on the water tower - though we didn’t know that’s what she was at the ...

My absolute favorite thing about birding is the ability to step into the private lives of birds. I’ve watched Acorn Woodpeckers squabble en masse and have spent long enough staring at a California Towhee to discover that it picks through the leaf litter with a sudden jump instead of a polite scratch. Meanwhile, on trails and city streets I watch so many people rush past without ever knowing that was going on a few feet from them. 
 
But, observant as I am, there is so much I still don’t know about birds--one of those being how to identify waterfowl. Despite lots of experience with shorebirds, I never gave much thought to waterfowl. That’s why when I saw SFBBO’s Waterfowl Workshop with ...

​In 2020, SFBBO conducted our first year of a new comprehensive phalarope survey program. Phalaropes are medium-sized shorebirds that pass through San Francisco Bay during spring and fall migration. Unlike other shorebirds that find food in the ground at the water’s edge, phalaropes eat small items at the surface of open water and often swim. Due to their use of open water, it is difficult to find and count phalaropes to understand population trends. This means ...

​I often feel like a late bloomer when it comes to my love for birds. Throughout my undergraduate career, birds would pop up in my classes every so often and I always thought they were interesting.

​But it wasn’t until my last spring quarter at Stanford when I took the introductory Ornithology course that I realized how much I loved learning about birds. In every lesson, I felt engaged and enthusiastic to soak in as much knowledge ...

​My love of birds started from an early age. Birding allowed me to explore the diversity of birds and ponder their interesting behaviors and adaptations. It became a way to connect with and observe nature. When I discovered science, birds were not just a hobby anymore, but a passion and a career path. To me, science is a portal into understanding and advancing our knowledge of birds. 

​The Bird Sound Workshop was a nice blend of science and bird sound ID. I especially enjoyed learning about how birds sing and call (including how they produce two sounds at the same time), how and why sounds are learned or innate (and how this creates dialects of song), and the reasons for why a bird would call. This helped me better understand bird biology. When it came time to learn about individual species, understanding 

​When I walk around local city and state parks, I take in a plethora of information: amazing sceneries, new terrain patterns, and rest spots up ahead. When I decide to stop and remain stationary, I realize that bird calls and songs are the most prominent signals I receive. Bird calls and songs truly do tower many of our environments. I can even hear some right now ...