Doug Henderson: Every year in December birders attempt to identify and count every bird in the Oakland area as part of a citizen science project that began 125 years ago in 1900. The Oakland count started in 1938. Ornithologists study the data to understand bird population trends — what species are thriving, declining, or moving as their habitat and the climate change.
The local count area is a circle 15 miles in diameter centered in the Oakland Hills, divided into smaller areas to be covered by teams of approximately 10 people who spend the day counting every bird they can find. The City of Alameda has two teams, the main island and Bay Farm Island, led by myself and Rusty Scalf.
We start with expectations of what birds we will see, in roughly three categories — common birds always found, less common birds we hope to find, and surprises that we have not found on previous counts.
On Alameda’s main island, many of our expected birds are shorebirds that feed on the abundant marine life at the edge of the bay, birds you may see in large numbers, especially at Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary and other shoreline locations. The species seen in the largest number were 1,536 dunlin and 1,139 western sandpipers. One special Alameda bird is the endangered snowy plover, a little brown fluff ball that winters on Crown Beach at or near the roped off areas designated to protect them from human and dog traffic. We were happy to find 35 of them this year, a higher number than in past years. Other special birds included four burrowing owls and 41 horned larks.
A big part of the experience is the people we bird with. For newer birders it can be exciting to see birds new to them. One person had never seen a loon. Three species of loons visit San Francisco Bay during the winter, birds we hope to see but don’t always find. Looking out at the bay, a bird suddenly popped up from underwater. Larger than the nearby diving ducks but smaller than the ubiquitous Canada geese, with a streamlined shape for diving, its heavy straight bill identified it as a common loon. It made that new birder’s day. Soon, another common loon appeared just offshore. Then two other loons were spotted farther out, but they looked different — slimmer, with heads and slender bills tilted upward, showing them to be red-throated loons. All these birds were in their winter plumage, muted gray colors, unlike the striking colors they wear when they return to their breeding grounds far to the north.
The most fun for me are the unusual birds that are rarely seen or have never been recorded by our group before. We had several unusual sightings this year — cackling goose, blue-winged teal, Eurasian wigeon, ring-necked duck, sora, ruddy turnstone, golden-crowned kinglet, and Lincoln’s sparrow. The two other highlights of the day were species that had never been recorded by our group before — black skimmer and black-throated gray warbler.
Rusty Scalf: The Bay Farm Island portion of the Christmas Bird Count involves three teams and, this year, 10 counters.
One team walks the Estuary shoreline from the Doolittle Bridge west to Shoreline Park — close to the Ferry Terminal — then returns along the lagoons. Along the Estuary, counters must survey the Bay for complex groups of water birds such as ducks, grebes, loons, cormorants, and pelicans. Diving ducks alone can number in the hundreds, including scaup, scoters, bufflehead, goldeneye, mergansers, and ruddy ducks. Five different species of grebe are possible. Identifying them requires a sharp eye and much study.
The winding lagoons are surprisingly productive. Every year they have hooded mergansers, which are difficult to find elsewhere. This season we spotted 13 of these remarkable little diving ducks, found only in North America. The male’s semicircular white head patch and black-and-white vertical body stripes attract attention, but the female’s light-brown crest is also beautiful.
A second team covers the shoreline, wetlands, lagoons, and terrestrial habitats along Harbor Bay Parkway, which even after decades of relentless development still shelters birds. Green-winged teal, cinnamon teal, and shorebirds such as yellowlegs still make their living in the drainages and sumps, so we see them every year.
The third party covers the Corica Park Golf Course which, after several years of habitat disruption due to a complete course redesign, is once again a productive landscape as the ecosystem, especially as the wetlands, recover. Virginia rail was found here this year for the first time ever. Three years of rain certainly helped.
Doug Henderson has been birding Alameda and the surrounding area for many years and is a member of the Golden Gate Bird Alliance.
Rusty Scalf began birding in high school in the 1960s. He is a member of Golden Gate Bird Alliance and participates each year in several different bird counts.
This is part of a series of articles about Alameda wildlife by the Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Reserve, a Conservation Committee of the Golden Gate Bird Alliance (formerly Audubon). Learn more about EBRPD at www.ebparks.org and the Golden Gate Bird Alliance at https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/
