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 […]
Stanislaus Audubon Christmas Count
Tiny Bird Returns for Audubon Christmas Count
Last Monday morning, an ambitious birder said she had high hopes for seeing a bright red bird. Local birders of the hard core variety knew Sharon Reeve was hoping to see a Vermilion Flycatcher, a winter rarity that resides many miles south of the Valley. The species had been recorded only twice previously in Stanislaus County. Over a dozen birders, most of them members of the Stanislaus Audubon Society Board […]
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 […]
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 total in over twenty years, and the total number of individual birds was also way […]
Rare Visitors Brighten Audubon Christmas Count
Most people wouldn’t give the shallow pond out near the San Joaquin River west of Modesto a second glance. But from a bird’s eye view, it’s like a table set with a holiday feast. That’s why there were Black-necked Stilts, Greater Yellowlegs, and Long-billed Dowitchers feeding along its margins on December 30, when two participants in Stanislaus Audubon Society’s annual Caswell-Westley Christmas bird count came upon the site in […]