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By Guest Blogger & SFBBO Board Co-Chair Bruce Paton  Bird photography was key to my mental health during the pandemic. Some of my calmest moments the past few years have been spent at the edge of the Bay. I’m a passionate bird photographer, and my camera has helped me first to see birds and then to learn about their behavior and their habitats.
Professionally and personally, I have spent several decades working on sustainability. In particular, I have been working and writing to help communities limit and reverse the damage from climate change. “Sustainability”, “environment” and even “climate change” are abstract concepts, but watching a Great Egret take off always takes my breath away...
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By Guest Blogger & SFBBO Board Member Debbie Wong  "Wow, hello handsome!” I was talking to the male Townsend’s Warbler that I took out of the bag. It is always a mixture of mystery, surprise, and anticipation when processing (and banding) a bird that you didn’t personally extract from the mist net.
This gorgeous male (see photo below) that we met on February 8 was the first of its species we saw this year, a sign of spring. After so many cancellations and delays due to recent rain and cold temperatures, SFBBO's Coyote Creek Field Station, CCFS, where I have worked as a volunteer bander for over 20 years, is slowly resuming its operation... By Guest Blogger & SFBBO Board Member Shubha Tuljapurkar  As a nature photographer, I often visit the Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge in Alviso. Early one morning, I was photographing a crowd of Snowy Egrets, Great Egrets and gulls feasting and frolicking at high tide. I marveled at how lucky I was to enjoy that sight within ten miles of where I lived, and that's when it hit me. If we didn't protect our habitats from the pressures of climate change and people, these birds may not be frolicking here in the future. I resolved to get involved.
I looked for ways to leverage my background in marketing and management in the technology industry, and my previous leadership positions at several Bay Area start-ups and at nonprofit organizations promoting digital literacy at underserved schools in California... By Guest Blogger & SFBBO Board Co-Chair Lynne Trulio, PhD  I’m a South San Francisco Bay gal and a researcher who studies birds. For many years, there was very little research occurring in our region, which was very distressing to me. But, there was one research group working hard to understand the South Bay and educate people about its beauty—and that group was SFBBO! I naturally gravitated to SFBBO and learned about SFBBO’s many great programs including the colonial waterbird and avian disease programs, both of which continue today.
Another aspect of SFBBO that I have always thought was amazing is the Coyote Creek Field Station, a long-term bird banding station in Milpitas that is providing critical information on how resident and migrating birds are doing. As a professor at San José State University, I have brought my students to the field station, had them do research on the restoration of the habitat, and have graduate students who wrote master’ theses using bird banding data from the field station. ... By Guest Blogger & SFBBO Board Member Karan Gathani  My foray into volunteering with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory was set into motion after attending a docent-led hike by Jan Hintermeister, who was Chair on the SFBBO Board at that time. We spotted a Pied-billed Grebe diving in one of the ponds, which triggered a discussion about identifying birds by their shapes. Long story short, Jan coaxed me to check out SFBBO as an organization I should volunteer with since it overlaps with my interest areas.
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WingbeatWingbeat is a blog where you can find the most recent stories about our science and outreach work. We'll also share guest posts from volunteers, donors, partners, and others in the avian science and conservation world. To be a guest writer, please contact [email protected]. Archives
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San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory ● 524 Valley Way, Milpitas, CA 95035 ● 408-946-6548 ● [email protected]