When the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1987, its primary purpose was to protect winter habitat of the then-endangered Aleutian cackling goose. Since that time, the refuge has provided an “umbrella effect” for over 200 species of birds, ranging in size from the tiny Bushtit, which weighs in at less than an ounce, to Tundra Swans, which average around twenty pounds and fly over 4,000 miles […]
Caswell/Westley Christmas Count
Goose Music Greets Birders for Frosty Count
January 2, Stanislaus County birders and friends scraped the frost off their windshields well before the sun rose and motored out to their assigned areas for the 122nd annual Audubon Christmas Count, a worldwide event that provides a huge database for fluctuations in bird populations around the world. One of hundreds of compilers of local counts in the United States, Harold Reeve was joined by his wife Sharon and their […]
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 new record for total species recorded on the Caswell/Westley Count with 142 species. Some who […]