Bird-friendly gardening resources

Bird-friendly gardening resources

By Ilana DeBare
Fall is a great time to create a garden that attracts birds… and we’ve got some resources to help!
We just published a new version of our brochure on Inviting Wildlife Into Your Backyard — now with versions focused on San Francisco, the East Bay, and in Spanish. Download the version of your choice or pick up a paper copy from our office. It includes a short list of native plants that support Bay Area birds, gardening tips, and local nurseries specializing in native plants.
Some other good resources:
National Audubon Society just rolled out a terrific interactive web site called Plants for Birds that will help you select plants native to your region of the country. It also allows you to see which bird species are attracted to a particular plant, and offers lots of gardening tips.
From NAS's Plants for Birds web siteFrom NAS’s Plants for Birds web site
San Francisco’s Department of the Environment has a web site focused on gardening to support pollinators — bees and butterflies, as well as birds.  You’ve probably read how bee populations are under severe stress worldwide. One way to help them is to avoid the use of neonicitinoids, pesticides which may harm pollinators. The SF Environment web site includes a list of nurseries in San Francisco, the East Bay, and North Bay that don’t use neonicitinoids.
The SF Plant Finder web site will help identify native plants suited to the terrain in your part of San Francisco.
Bringing Back the Natives offers monthly East Bay workshops in selecting native plants, as well as a springtime tour of inspiring native-landscaped gardens.
Allen's Hummingbird by Bob GundersonAllen’s Hummingbird by Bob Gunderson
And… this weekend offers great opportunities to buy native plants! In the East Bay, seven native plant nurseries including the U.C. Botanical Garden are holding a special Native Plant Extravaganza sale on Sunday, October 23. Many of these nurseries are only open to the public once or twice a year: Click here for details and directions.
In San Francisco, the Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society is extending its fall plant sale to this Saturday, October 22, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 2207 26th Avenue.
Get started planning or planting now for a beautiful, bird-filled garden in the spring. Let us know what you plant and how it goes! Or — if you already have a garden that attracts birds — tell us about it.…

Bird-friendly gardening resources

Bird-friendly gardening resources

By Ilana DeBare
Fall is a great time to create a garden that attracts birds… and we’ve got some resources to help!
We just published a new version of our brochure on Inviting Wildlife Into Your Backyard — now with versions focused on San Francisco, the East Bay, and in Spanish. Download the version of your choice or pick up a paper copy from our office. It includes a short list of native plants that support Bay Area birds, gardening tips, and local nurseries specializing in native plants.
Some other good resources:
National Audubon Society just rolled out a terrific interactive web site called Plants for Birds that will help you select plants native to your region of the country. It also allows you to see which bird species are attracted to a particular plant, and offers lots of gardening tips.
From NAS's Plants for Birds web siteFrom NAS’s Plants for Birds web site
San Francisco’s Department of the Environment has a web site focused on gardening to support pollinators — bees and butterflies, as well as birds.  You’ve probably read how bee populations are under severe stress worldwide. One way to help them is to avoid the use of neonicitinoids, pesticides which may harm pollinators. The SF Environment web site includes a list of nurseries in San Francisco, the East Bay, and North Bay that don’t use neonicitinoids.
The SF Plant Finder web site will help identify native plants suited to the terrain in your part of San Francisco.
Bringing Back the Natives offers monthly East Bay workshops in selecting native plants, as well as a springtime tour of inspiring native-landscaped gardens.
Allen's Hummingbird by Bob GundersonAllen’s Hummingbird by Bob Gunderson
And… this weekend offers great opportunities to buy native plants! In the East Bay, seven native plant nurseries including the U.C. Botanical Garden are holding a special Native Plant Extravaganza sale on Sunday, October 23. Many of these nurseries are only open to the public once or twice a year: Click here for details and directions.
In San Francisco, the Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society is extending its fall plant sale to this Saturday, October 22, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 2207 26th Avenue.
Get started planning or planting now for a beautiful, bird-filled garden in the spring. Let us know what you plant and how it goes! Or — if you already have a garden that attracts birds — tell us about it.…

Fall birding in Gambell, Alaska

Fall birding in Gambell, Alaska

By Anne Hoff

Sitting on a plastic mat on a pebble beach, the wind blowing at 30 miles per hour from the north, I join a line of thirty warmly bundled birders watching the wild Bering Sea. A slight windbreak is provided by the line of all-terrain vehicles along the flat ridge of the beach behind us. Though the temp is 40 Fahrenheit, it’s cold!

Thus begins a birding day at the Siberian Yupik village of Gambell on the Northwest Cape of treeless St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. The population of 680 native residents swells for a few weeks from mid-May to June and from mid-August to October each year by up to 50 non-islanders who seek a view of birds found nowhere else in North America, as well as surprise Asian vagrants that draw big-list birders.

Part of the Bering Land Bridge during the last Ice Age, St. Lawrence Island is about 20 miles by 100 miles. It now lies 45 miles off the coast of the Chukotsk Peninsula of Siberia and 195 miles WNW of Nome. (You truly can see Russia while doing a sea watch!)

I travelled there as part of a ten-person, 11-day tour with Wilderness Birding Adventures. We flew to Nome and then transferred to a 12-seat plane for the flight to Gambell. Luckily, all of our food — omitted from our flight due to weight limitations — arrived on the next flight.

When the tiny plane door opened, tour guide Aaron Lang looked in and said, “Are you Anne?” It turns out that I was the only newbie to this company and one of only two new to the island. Aaron knew everyone else on the tour and most of them knew several others. I discovered that Gambell birding etiquette required that everyone who wanted to see a bird sighted by anyone in any group on the island be summoned by radio while the finder “sat on” the bird and held off photographers who risked flushing the bird while others raced to the site. This fits the definition of “chasing birds.”

Aaron’s first announcement was, “There’s a Gray-tailed Tattler just reported from along the lake just down the airstrip, so instead of going to the house first, we’ll head down to find it.” We left our luggage on the tarmac (no terminal) and climbed aboard the “birder’s bus”, a two-wheeled open-air cart holding six passengers pulled behind an ATV (also known as “four-wheeler”).…

Fall birding in Gambell, Alaska

Fall birding in Gambell, Alaska

By Anne Hoff

Sitting on a plastic mat on a pebble beach, the wind blowing at 30 miles per hour from the north, I join a line of thirty warmly bundled birders watching the wild Bering Sea. A slight windbreak is provided by the line of all-terrain vehicles along the flat ridge of the beach behind us. Though the temp is 40 Fahrenheit, it’s cold!

Thus begins a birding day at the Siberian Yupik village of Gambell on the Northwest Cape of treeless St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. The population of 680 native residents swells for a few weeks from mid-May to June and from mid-August to October each year by up to 50 non-islanders who seek a view of birds found nowhere else in North America, as well as surprise Asian vagrants that draw big-list birders.

Part of the Bering Land Bridge during the last Ice Age, St. Lawrence Island is about 20 miles by 100 miles. It now lies 45 miles off the coast of the Chukotsk Peninsula of Siberia and 195 miles WNW of Nome. (You truly can see Russia while doing a sea watch!)

I travelled there as part of a ten-person, 11-day tour with Wilderness Birding Adventures. We flew to Nome and then transferred to a 12-seat plane for the flight to Gambell. Luckily, all of our food — omitted from our flight due to weight limitations — arrived on the next flight.

When the tiny plane door opened, tour guide Aaron Lang looked in and said, “Are you Anne?” It turns out that I was the only newbie to this company and one of only two new to the island. Aaron knew everyone else on the tour and most of them knew several others. I discovered that Gambell birding etiquette required that everyone who wanted to see a bird sighted by anyone in any group on the island be summoned by radio while the finder “sat on” the bird and held off photographers who risked flushing the bird while others raced to the site. This fits the definition of “chasing birds.”

Aaron’s first announcement was, “There’s a Gray-tailed Tattler just reported from along the lake just down the airstrip, so instead of going to the house first, we’ll head down to find it.” We left our luggage on the tarmac (no terminal) and climbed aboard the “birder’s bus”, a two-wheeled open-air cart holding six passengers pulled behind an ATV (also known as “four-wheeler”).…

Fall birding in Gambell, Alaska

Fall birding in Gambell, Alaska

By Anne Hoff
Sitting on a plastic mat on a pebble beach, the wind blowing at 30 miles per hour from the north, I join a line of thirty warmly bundled birders watching the wild Bering Sea. A slight windbreak is provided by the line of all-terrain vehicles along the flat ridge of the beach behind us. Though the temp is 40 Fahrenheit, it’s cold!
Thus begins a birding day at the Siberian Yupik village of Gambell on the Northwest Cape of treeless St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. The population of 680 native residents swells for a few weeks from mid-May to June and from mid-August to October each year by up to 50 non-islanders who seek a view of birds found nowhere else in North America, as well as surprise Asian vagrants that draw big-list birders.
Part of the Bering Land Bridge during the last Ice Age, St. Lawrence Island is about 20 miles by 100 miles. It now lies 45 miles off the coast of the Chukotsk Peninsula of Siberia and 195 miles WNW of Nome. (You truly can see Russia while doing a sea watch!)
I travelled there as part of a ten-person, 11-day tour with Wilderness Birding Adventures. We flew to Nome and then transferred to a 12-seat plane for the flight to Gambell. Luckily, all of our food — omitted from our flight due to weight limitations — arrived on the next flight.
When the tiny plane door opened, tour guide Aaron Lang looked in and said, “Are you Anne?” It turns out that I was the only newbie to this company and one of only two new to the island. Aaron knew everyone else on the tour and most of them knew several others. I discovered that Gambell birding etiquette required that everyone who wanted to see a bird sighted by anyone in any group on the island be summoned by radio while the finder “sat on” the bird and held off photographers who risked flushing the bird while others raced to the site. This fits the definition of “chasing birds.”
Aaron’s first announcement was, “There’s a Gray-tailed Tattler just reported from along the lake just down the airstrip, so instead of going to the house first, we’ll head down to find it.” We left our luggage on the tarmac (no terminal) and climbed aboard the “birder’s bus”, a two-wheeled open-air cart holding six passengers pulled behind an ATV (also known as “four-wheeler”).…