Wingbeat Blog

There is so much to learn from our more than human kin. I am fascinated by our feathered relatives. In the morning when I first wake, before I open up the curtains to take a peek at the day, I enjoy guessing what the weather is like outside according to the bird sounds. As a California Naturalist and Field Biologist, I love spending time outdoors observing wildlife. Living amongst the coastal redwood giants, surrounded by wetlands, rivers, beaches …

I started birding a few months ago, and it has quickly become my favorite hobby. I have always loved animals, but birds are definitely my favorite. Something about them just captivates me. The fast flutter of a hummingbird’s wings. The steady soar of a raptor. The cheerful “cheeps” of a baby killdeer. I love observing and identifying birds, and I am always thrilled to see a “lifer”!  Photographing birds is another hobby of mine, as well as drawing and painting birds. 

​When I heard about the Bird ID Techniques Workshop with Alvaro …

I have always had a fascination with birds, growing in Arandas, Jalisco Mexico my Abuelito kept many birds, he fed them, cared for them and I would help him with his daily tasks. But later in life, birds became part of my art inspiration, birds were my subjects and my muses but it was last year that I really started to learn and to be able to identify, both visually and auditorily, many species of birds.

When my family and I moved to the states we … 

​What is it that draws people to birding?  For some of us, it’s a single, unforgettable encounter; for others it’s more gradual, perhaps even accidental.  For Callie, in Joy McCullough’s Across the Pond, it’s part of the completely new life she discovers when her family moves from a small apartment in San Diego to a castle they have inherited in Scotland.

​​Shy and uncomfortable in new situations, Callie discovers that seventh grade (hers) at her new school will be “high school.”  Fearful of being an outsider among older students, she persuades her parents to …

​There is more to play than meets the eye. Play forms the foundation for life-long growth and development. That’s the message educator Chris Pancoast shares with parents, teachers, and the community through his Why Play programs and books. 
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The idea that kids gain valuable skills while …  

Babies! They’re everywhere this time of year – on the ground, in the trees, in holes, and especially on the water, though we don’t get to see those born in the far north, whose parents migrate through here in spring or fall, until they’re past their babyhood. Pointing out fledglings at the feeder or water dish – especially during  the period when they’re still flapping and begging and clearly demanding food from their parents – is an easy way to get young children interested in watching …

Sometimes we think the smallest children are too young to be introduced to birds. But from their first day, they’re learning by observation. My own parents claimed that my first real sentence came when I announced, from a highchair near the bird-feeder window, “Jaybird jump down!”

In I Am A Bird, Hope Lim introduces us to a small girl who loves riding on the back of her dad’s bicycle.“Every morning,” she says, “I fly like a bird on Daddy’s bike. I sing …

​“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 …

I was given the opportunity to be able to attend, for the last two Wednesdays, the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory’s Waterfowl ID Workshop, through a scholarship fund. Going into the workshop, I truly had no idea, or any background knowledge about ducks.

I was not a very informed person, and despite me being a beginner through this workshop, I really was able to learn a lot, as well as develop a new sense of fondness for ducks in general.

​I was able to learn many different things, such as how to spot, and be able to tell which ducks are which, as well as learning about different types of ducks mating, and special characteristics that they have. 

​My favorite part to learn was about the “hybrid” ducks, and the ways that even ducks have evolved, and I very much enjoyed being able to see the diversity in the duck species, which I had never been exposed to before. I …

​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 …