The San Joaquin Valley has always featured great extremes in weather and landscape―everything from flood to drought, and desert to inland sea. Before it was drained for agriculture, Tulare Lake, in the southern part of the Valley, was the second largest lake in the United States. Prior to levees and flood control, seasonal wetlands often […]
Nature
Watch a Film, Learn Your Birds
People have been recording bird species in Stanislaus and Merced Counties for over a hundred years. Both counties now have bird lists of over three-hundred species. And despite the seeming improbability, almost anyone can learn a hundred local birds—it just takes a jolt of awareness and a willingness to open your eyes to the hidden […]
Will the Kite Survive?
In his classic Birds of the Pacific States, Ralph Hoffmann laments the decline of the White-tailed Kite: “The softness of its coloring and the confiding and gentle nature of the White-tailed Kite, so different from the wildness of most birds of prey, make a strong appeal to lovers of nature, but not alas! to […]
New Record for Bird Count
The Audubon Christmas Bird Count is the longest running citizen-science survey in history. This year marked its 115th anniversary. Each year around Christmas time, men, women, and children from around the world go outside and count bird species and populations within a given region. On January 4, volunteers from the Stanislaus Audubon Society set a […]
Target Bird: American Kestrel
“This is a bird you can only appreciate with binoculars,” said Brad Barker last Saturday. Barker, Conservation Chair for Yokuts Sierra Club, was looking at an American Kestrel while participating in the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Count. Though it’s our most common falcon, the diminutive Kestrel is easily overlooked. Its cousin the Peregrine Falcon garners […]
Target Bird: Horned Grebe
Oftentimes when they encounter grebes in the San Joaquin Valley birders are presented with an identification problem. In all, six species of grebe can be found, depending on the time of the year. Year-round residents include Clark’s and Western Grebes and the diminutive Pied-billed Grebe. Of the three, the Pied-billed Grebe is by far the […]
Reeve Rolls 300—Birds
When Harold Reeve moved to Modesto in 1983, one of the first things he decided to do was keep a list of all the bird species he saw in Stanislaus County. “County birding is the coming thing,” he told a friend. “I want us to have a good list.” To Reeve, “good” means several things, […]
Target Bird: Bushtit
Little brown birds (lbbs) are often impediments to beginning birders’ ascent up the learning curve of bird identification. Many lbbs are sparrows, and too many sparrows look alike, especially in immature plumages. Other lbbs are simply non-descript, as much gray as brown, and difficult to identify chiefly because they lack distinguishing marks or bold colors. […]
Target Bird: Red-shouldered Hawk
In “How to Really Learn the Birds,” we suggested using the “target method” as a quick way of learning the common birds around you. To use the target method, simply study a bird before going out and searching for it. The key is to study birds you can expect to find in a given […]
What Happened to the Birds?
Last Saturday, the Stanislaus Audubon Society conducted its annual LaGrange/Waterford Christmas bird count. The count has been an annual event for well over thirty years, and usually tallies over 130 species and tens of thousands of individual birds. This year was different. Count compiler Jim Gain’s preliminary estimate of 112 species was the lowest […]