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Wingbeat Blog

The most recent stories about our science and outreach work

  • On the Board-Walk: Meet Bruce Paton

    By Guest Blogger & SFBBO Board Co-Chair Bruce Paton
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    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. 
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    “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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  • Teen Volunteers Use Colonial Waterbird Data to Investigate Effects of Flora on Bay Area Birds

    By ​Teen Volunteers Peter Covert, Lara Tseng, and Yunjiao (Grace) Xiao
    A family of Snowy Egrets, including one visible adult, an adult hidden in the back, and four juveniles.

    Back in the days of the global shelter-in-place, Nani Welsh, a Science Outreach Intern at SFBBO, created a program bringing together the teenage volunteers at the organization. The idea was to foster a community for teens interested in bird science and conservation and provide mentorship and opportunities to work together through research and outreach projects. Nani reached out to us teens directly, inviting us to be a part of this new program. Virtually gathering together nine of SFBBO’s teen volunteers, we became the first members of the Teen Volunteer Program.

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  • Birds, Data, and Taco Dinners: SFBBO Research Represented at Western Bird Banding Conference

    By Guest Blogger Wendy Gibbons
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    The joys of sharing scientific research, bird banding, and gathering over taco dinners proved irresistible to adventurers in the world of avian conservation science, including SFBBO senior landbird biologist Dan Wenny, research affiliate Julian Tattoni, and volunteer Wendy Gibbons, this May. Wenny, Tattoni and Gibbons experienced this winning combination during the 2023 meeting of the Western Bird Banding Association (WBBA) meeting outside of Santa Clarita, California. The WBBA is a scientific organization that encourages and promotes bird banding as a tool to study the biology and migration of western birds. 

    The three made the trip south from the Bay Area to join over 40 other bird banders from the western United States and Canada, including Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Idaho. 

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  • On the Board-Walk: Meet Debbie Wong

    By Guest Blogger & SFBBO Board Member Debbie Wong​
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    “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.

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  • On the Board-Walk: Meet Shubha Tuljapurkar

    By Guest Blogger & SFBBO Board Member Shubha Tuljapurkar
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    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.

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  • Young Author Works to Protect Nature

    By Guest Blogger Kelsey Sweetland
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    ​Every Saturday and Sunday morning, my family and I make waffles and play our favorite board games. We throw the doors to our forested backyard wide open and let the sound of the rustling oak trees, chirping birds, and warm sunlight filter into our house. We play games about space exploration, strategy, ancient civilizations, and much more. One day we bought a new board game called Wingspan. As we played, we learned about beautiful, colorful, and fascinating birds that live all around the world. This quickly became one of our favorite games, and we grew more aware of the woodpeckers, songbirds, and hawks living around us.

    I have loved nature from as early as I could remember. …

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  • 2022 Kids Bird Art Contest

    by Education and Outreach Specialist Sirena Lao
    A young girl holding up her bird artwork

    SFBBO’s Kids Bird Art Contest is a fun annual contest where we invite kids ages 3-17 to spend time outside, observe birds in nature, and record their observations in the form of art and writing. This year, to continue celebrating SFBBO’s 40th Anniversary, we asked kids to recall a memorable experience with birds in nature and to create a drawing and written story reflecting that encounter.

    We were incredibly impressed by the submissions! Many of the kids who participated demonstrated wonderful artistic skills and attention to detail, and many were also talented storytellers! We received 90 entries, and our judges loved seeing everyone’s artwork and reading the stories. We were happy to see that so many kids are noticing birds and have made meaningful connections with nature. Seeing that the next generation is inspired by nature makes us hopeful for the future of birds and their habitats!

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  • On the Board-Walk: Meet Lynne Trulio

    By Guest Blogger & SFBBO Board Co-Chair Lynne Trulio, PhD
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    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. 

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  • SFBBO Biologists Release Four Juvenile Snowy Plovers

    By Education and Outreach Specialist Sirena Lao
    Looking through one of the holes of the cardboard carrier, we can see two juvenile Snowy Plovers (small grayish-tan and white shorebirds) standing on a sheet in the carrier.

    This year has been eventful so far for Snowy Plovers and our biologists who study them here in the South San Francisco Bay. Western Snowy Plovers are small, pale shorebirds that breed along the Pacific Coast from Southern Washington to Baja California, as well as inland at alkali lakes. The Pacific Coast population of Western Snowy Plovers is federally listed as a threatened distinct population segment, with about 2,500 individuals. These birds typically breed on coastal sandy beaches, but with human development and disturbance, some birds have taken advantage of former salt evaporation ponds here in the Bay, a rather stark landscape that mimics salt panne habitat found in isolated areas of the coast and interior. These salt ponds now regularly support about 10% of the Pacific Coast population.

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  • Perry’s Journey Episode 10: Homecoming

    By Science Outreach Intern Katrina McCollough
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    Home sweet summer home. What was all this for? This comic, this journey? Why do birds like Perry fly thousands of miles, and why do some do it twice a year? How did they know where to go? And most importantly, why are migrating bird populations in decline?

    Click on “Read More” below to check out Episode Ten and learn about Perry’s homecoming as he completes his migration journey! Click here to read Episode 9.  

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