Wingbeat Blog

​As bustling crowds rush from store to store and family and friends chatter away at their dinner tables, I set up my music stand, pick up my instrument, and introduce a new sound to the cacophony of Castro Street, Mountain View: the sound of my viola. 

​A few months ago, I began “Busking for Birds”—playing my viola on the street for donations that I raise for environmental nonprofits, including SFBBO. I’ve been playing violin for 9 years and viola for 5 years, and on the street, I play a …​

​In late Fall, weary flocks of Golden-crowned Sparrows start to arrive at their wintering grounds across California. One location where the sparrows settle down for the cold months is the University of Santa Cruz Arboretum. This 135-acre garden is brimming with exotic plants, as well as California flora, from Australian cotton-candy-coned Woolly Banksia to native sticky-leaved monkeyflowers.

Professor Bruce Lyon and his graduate students have been banding Golden-crowned Sparrows at the arboretum for over 18 years. Through banding, they attribute behavior and DNA to individuals. The lab has published many studies on sparrow social behavior in conjunction with former graduate students Dai Shizuka, Theadora Block, and Alexis Chaine.

​I have been birding for about nine years and quickly realized how important photography was for me as a birder. Shortly after I began actively birding, I would get home and want to look at the birds I had seen in closer detail or note certain details. However, I often found that I had a hard time recalling so many different details, and there were also instances where I wanted to capture a particular bird or scene.  That is when I realized how valuable photography was going to be for me.    

​With the Great Backyard Bird Count almost upon us, there’s no better time to think about bringing the younger members of the family and the community into the community of birders. The way to start, of course, is to get them out of doors, or to put up a feeder where they’ll see it every day. But sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes a book can help.

Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple, in Crow Not Crow (illustrated by Elizabeth Dulemba, Cornell Publishing Group, 2018), begins with a girl who says, “My brothers all love to go out birding with Dad. ​They don’t have any trouble telling one bird from another. But to me, birds look pretty much the same – wings, beak, and legs.” Her dad knows better.  

I started birding early last year. Ever since then, birding has become one of my favorite things to do. Birds are always doing something interesting. Sometimes they are eating, flying, or singing. It is so wonderful knowing that every time I go birding, I am going to see something different. It could be a different bird, or a new behavior, but I know that it will be new and interesting every time. I enjoy both drawing and crocheting birds, and I just love birds in general. With my love of birds came a love of bird photography. Capturing fleeting moments with the push of a button (or in this case, a click of the shutter button) is super fun for me. With birds, they are literally …​

​The season of gift-giving, for me, is an excuse to think about each of the children on my mental list of family and friends. What are their interests? How have they grown in the last year?  What would help to stretch their imaginations, their curiosity, their knowledge?

For the youngest on my list, one of this year’s books will certainly be Robin Page’s The Beak Book (Beach Lane, 2021). Oversized, detailed illustrations by the author show a variety of bird beaks and their uses, from straining (ruddy duck) and ​sniffing (kiwi) to prying (red crossbill) ..

​I am an avid sixteen-year-old birder living in the Bay Area.  I began paying attention to birds over a decade ago, but really started birding when I was eight after picking up a bird guide at my local bookstore. I attempted to make my own bird guide, which was quite a challenge for an eight-year- old.  Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out like a Sibley’s Bird Guide.  Since then, birding has been a passion for me.  

​Today, birding has become a family affair.  My family …

​The Kids Bird Art Contest is a fun annual contest that brings science and art together. We typically invite kids ages 3-17 to spend time outside recording information about birds in their neighborhood or at a nearby park and then to create a scientific drawing with notes in the style of a nature journal or field guide. This year, in the spirit of SFBBO’s 40th Anniversary, we instead asked kids to recall a memorable experience they had with birds in nature and create a drawing and written story that reflects that encounter. 

Each year for SFBBO’s California Fall Challenge (CFC) fundraiser, we unveil new CFC T-Shirt design as part of our efforts to raise money to support our science and outreach work.

With this year being SFBBO’s 40th anniversary, we knew we had to do a special shirt to celebrate 40 years of conserving birds and their habitats and educating the community.

What better way to do that than by featuring 40 bird species? Science illustrator and graphic designer Julie Ho Sung was up for the challenge.

​With so many Bay Area bird species to choose from, we ultimately decided to include these 40, read below to learn about these birds and their connection to our work!

​The birds were 40 days old. 

It was August 20th and I was at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve in Hayward, a haven for many bird species, including the three Western Snowy Plover juveniles patiently waiting in a plastic pet carrier that was their temporary home. 

My colleague Ben Pearl, a biologist, held the carrier in one hand, a spotting scope slung over his other shoulder. He walked slowly across the moonscape ground, eyes peeled for movement that would let us know where the older plovers were hiding among white algae and shells. I followed a half step behind, our boots crunching softly on the dried earth.

SFBBO’s 40th Anniversary

The symbolism of their age was not lost on us. This fall the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory …