SF Bird Club January Newsletter

December Recap

In case you missed it you can find last month's newsletter here: december newsletter

December bird walk

In December we walked around the Crissy Field Marsh area.

Some of the birders brought cameras and snagged some cool photos. I'm including some of those photos below

Natalya took the following photos:

white crowned sparrow — very round white-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys)

our previous bird of the month the long-billed curlew (Numenius americanus)

a brewer's blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus) was particularly friendly with the group and hung out with us for a bit

May took the following photos:

the invasive but still pretty european starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)

Taylor took the following photos:

I also took some photos including these of the dozen+ killdeer we saw in the field

goose — these greater white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons) were in the parking lot by the starting point of the walk

Finally we got a little visit from santa

Thank you to everyone who came out and thank you to Natalya, May, and Taylor for the photos :)

January Bird Walk

This time we'll hit the presidio for the first time. I don't bird there often but I recently checked out Battery Godfrey/Marshall's beach area and saw some cool birds like surf scoters and sanderlings. But I also want to consider El Polin Springs, Lobos Creek, and Baker Beach. If you have any suggestions please let me know!

The birding walk will be on the saturday morning of january 10th. Head to the partiful link to rsvp.

Spotlight Bird: Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus)

This month's bird of the month is the killdeer. We saw a ton of them on our walk.

killdeer range map — range map from cornell's all about birds site

Fun Killdeer Facts:

they are plovers but unlike most shorebirds you usually find them in dry places like parking lots or in the rough at a golf course. A muddy area next to Crissy field lagoon is actually one of the only non-dry habitats I see them at.
they get their name from their call which kinda sounds like "kill-deer". you often hear this call when they're flying. in our bird walk we heard them only as they were flying overhead but after they landed in the field they seemed to be much more quiet
they are famous for their broken wing display where they pretend to be injured to lure predators away from the nest. it's a really cool display; check out this video from youtube
apparently they also occasionally perform a (sometimes fatal) charge against animals like cows, which is fittingly called the "ungulate display", but I struggled to find videos of it.
they tend to return to the same nesting site but males have a greater tendency to do this when they have a different mate (source study)
they mostly eat insects

Member Submissions

Thank you to everyone who sent me photos of the birds they saw!

Erin saw whooping cranes and sandhill cranes in Alabama and provided some fun facts, from Erin:

I did some birding in Alabama again and we saw whooping cranes (endangered) among the Sandhills at Wheeler wildlife refuge in Decatur. There were a total of five that we could see scattered in the Sandhills (20k sandhill cranes currently present). Attached some pics!

Whooping crane fun facts:
Endangered, at one point there were only 21 wild in 1941. W conservation efforts there are now around 800 in the wild.

Tallest North American bird species.

They will breed with Sandhills on occasion (giving the offspring "whoophills"), but these baby birds are sterile.

Difference from Sandhills: taller, stark white body w black wingtips, black and red mask covering the whole face whereas Sandhills just have a red hat.