Raptor Calendar now available

Dealing with the oil spill took its toll on me. That and my day job have kept me quite busy and distracted. I had hoped to get this calendar done earlier, but better late than never.

It wasn’t easy to decide which images to use. There are only 12 months plus the cover and I wanted to include one of each kind of species commonly found here, but the shots had to be sharp and special enough to include. I have yet to get a good shot of a Northern Harrier, and Merlins so far have escaped me completely. Obviously no calendar can do justice to the incredible diversity we are blessed with in the Bay Area, but here is my humble attempt. In it you will find shots of Red-tailed Hawks, Peregrine Falcons, White-tailed Kites plus one shot each of a Cooper’s Hawk and an American Kestrel.

So for those interested, here is a link to my 2008 Calendar

Raptors of the San Francisco Bay Region

Best Regards,

Glenn

Oil Spill damage continues

It has been almost seven days since the Cosco Busan hit the Bay Bridge and spilled over 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into the bay. I have been out looking for oiled birds to report and finding them every day that I go out. Sometimes the bird is completely covered.

and sometimes it is only partial..

But I have not been to the worst beaches, where hundreds of dead and dying birds have been recovered.  This is a mess and will take a long time to clean up.  Take heart, there are a lot of people working on this, but remember this could have been prevented and we need to do a better job of protecting what we have.

Regards,

Glenn Nevill

p.s.  pages these shots were taken from are available online at www.raptor-gallery.com in the ‘07 diary section.

Oil Spills

I spend a lot of time at Pier 14. I go out there almost every day at lunch and photograph the birds as they come and go. Occasionally I see a freighter, a container ship or an oil tanker pass underneath the Bay Bridge. I see the ships come in with water streaming from their anchor holes and I see them leave with smoke spewing from their stacks, partially burned bunker oil that pollutes our air.

But in all those times, I never once dreamed that one of those ships would hit the bridge and spill even a drop of fuel into our water. But it happened. I know there have been spills in the bay before this, yet it still numbs my brain to think about it.

Today at lunch I walked to the pier and saw my first oil-soaked duck. I think it was a Ruddy Duck, but it was so covered with oil that I could not make an ID. In addition, where ten Western Grebes had been sleeping out by the pier each noontime, only three were there today and all three had oil on their white feathers. I photographed everything. But I do not wish to put these photos up on this site. There have been enough photos of birds that have suffered through negligence, I don’t wish to add any more. Tomorrow, instead of birding, I am going oil hunting on the bay.

There is a lot that people can do to help. Birders can go out and check the shore for oil on the beaches and birds that are covered and report these. Go to out of the way spots, the more coverage of the bay we have, the fewer birds that will die and time is critical.

If you see a sick bird, do not touch it. The oil is very toxic and without proper protection you can make yourself sick. Report the bird to: 1 877 823-6926. Be specific as to type of bird, number sick or dead and the location. Leave your name and a call back number.

If you spot oil on the water or shore call this number: 1 985 781-0804

For more information go to this link…

http://www.ibrrc.org/Cosco_Busan_spill_2007.html

Oh and say a prayer, it might help.

Best to all,

Glenn

Common Birds in decline and what you can do to help.

Sorry I have not been blogging lately, I have a new job that keeps me quite busy and I have been doing some traveling as well.

However, in case you have not heard and most likely since you are reading my blog, you are already aware of this report on the decline of common bird species in America put out by Audubon 

Read it online by clicking on the link above.

 In addition, it made the cover of the July/August issue of Audubon magazine. The report lists 20 common species that have declined in population on the average of 70% since 1967.

Causes range from loss of habitat (grasslands, wetlands), Global Warming, loss of Boreal Forests, invasive non-native grass species,  and of course pollution.

The list includes:

Northern Bobwhite (down 82%)

Evening Grosbeak (down 78%)

Northern Pintail (down 77%)

Greater Scaup (down 75%)

Boreal Chickadee (down 73%)

Eastern Meadowlark (down 72%)

Common Tern (down 71%)

Loggerhead Shrike (down 71%)

Field Sparrow (down 68%)

Grasshopper Sparrow (down 65%)

Snow Bunting (down 64%)

Black-throated Sparrow (down 63%)

Lark Sparrow (down 63%)

Common Grackle (down 61%)

American Bittern (down 59%)

Rufous Hummingbird (down 58%)

Whip-poor-will (down 57%)

Horned Lark (down 56%)

Little Blue Heron (down 54%)

Ruffed Grouse (down 54%)

Quite a list and rather disturbing.  It was only through the efforts of thousands of volunteer bird counters that this trends were made known.

Want to do something to help?  Visit the Audubon link to the article and see what there is you can do.

Regards and good birding,

Glenn Nevill

Why we interfere…

For those not following the story of George and Gracie the peregrine falcons that live in San Francisco, a quick update:

Gracie laid three eggs on the Bay Bridge which were retrieved and incubated for safety. Gracie subsequently laid one egg on 77 Beale, a safer location, but she abandoned the egg for unknown reasons.

Some people have questioned the wisdom of doing this, one person on the discussion group drew parallels to the Jim Carey movie “The Truman Show” and mentioned that she felt sad and that we were interfering and making the falcons into semi-wild creatures by our interference.

Here is my response to that and the other people who have criticised the egg removal.

While there is some parallels in G&G’s situation to the movie “The Truman Show”, there is one very big difference among many and that is the peregrines are not captive in a dome, they are free to move about and leave as the desire moves them.

Peregrines have actually been in close relationship with humans for thousands of years, the art of falconry dates back to prehistory. Falcons have been bird-napped, eggs stolen, chicks stolen since before anyone could write. Other animals and birds have preyed upon their young, so there is nothing new going on here except that now the interference is occurring for their benefit and aid rather than for us.

If the chick had been left on the bridge to fledge, the most likely scenario would have been that the chick would have flown when no one was looking and ended up in the water and drowned. And no one would have seen it or been able to recover it in time.

Since the pair is nesting on a man-made structure that is similar enough to their natural habitat, but different enough to cause extreme risk to the young produced there, it seems only right that humans have the obligation to minimize the number of deaths caused by the artificial environment.

If the peregrine were not threatened, having only recently been taken off the endangered species list, pulling the eggs for incubation etc, would perhaps not be done. This would let the birds that nest on natural cliffs in safer locations reproduce while letting the birds attracted to man-made bridges that cause higher mortality die out because they do not reproduce. But I hope that would not be the case, as I mentioned up above, I believe we have the duty to try to mitigate and minimize any deaths to the falcons caused by environmental changes that we create, including deaths caused by window strikes, windmill power generation deaths, power line electrocutions, as well as the obvious need to keep the air and water clean and the environment clear of toxic substances.

I believe this applies to all creatures and all situations, not just to the falcons we love, but to all the creatures both great and small. I don’t think I am alone in this belief, members of Audubon, the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife fund and hundreds of other groups are lobbying every day to try to make this world safer for animals of all kinds.

Anyway that’s my two cents…

Regards,
Glenn Nevill