Golden Gate Audubon’s monthly Speaker Series in San Francisco and Berkeley features renowned naturalists, photographers, ornithologists, authors, international travelers, and other fascinating speakers. To cover event costs, we ask non-members for a voluntary donation of $5. Non-members may attend for free if they join that evening. As always, GGAS members are welcome to attend free of charge. Speaker Series venues are:

San Francisco: Sports Basement, 1590 Bryant Street San Francisco  94103
Berkeley: Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda (between Solano and Marin) 

Doors open for refreshments at 6:30 p.m. and the speaker will start promptly at 7 p.m.

Thank you to Recology – our San Francisco Speaker Series Sponsor.

 

Conservation Science at Audubon Canyon Ranch

Nils Warnock

San Francisco
Thursday, October 17
6:30 p.m. refreshments,
7 p.m. program

For 30 years, Audubon Canyon Ranch has been studying the ecology of wintering and migrant shorebirds and waterbirds in the Bay Area. Find out what they’ve learned, as well as the results of their 50 years of work on herons and egrets throughout the Bay. This will include a presentation of data on movements of the first-ever satellite telemetry-tracked Great Egrets on the West Coast of North America.

Nils Warnock is Director of Conservation Science at Audubon Canyon Ranch. Nils is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and has over 30 years of experience pertaining to the ecology and conservation of Pacific Flyway birds, especially shorebirds. He has a PhD in Ecology from the University of California at Davis and San Diego State University. Nils started his ornithological career at what was then the Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now Point Blue), serving for 10 years as the co-director of the Wetlands Division. Until recently, Nils was the Executive Director of Audubon Alaska and a Vice President of the National Audubon Society.

 

Golden Eagles in a Changing World

How disease and ectoparasites represent new threats to eagle populations

Ben Dudek

Berkeley
Thursday, November 21
6:30 p.m. refreshments,
7p.m. program

Golden Eagles are a well-studied, widely distributed raptor species. Long-term monitoring of Golden Eagle populations have revealed several current and emerging threats, including landscape-mediated diet shifts that may increase the potential for disease infection, and warming temperatures that may increase the distribution and abundance of eagle ectoparasites. This presentation will cover the prevalence of the disease trichomonosis and the abundance of ectoparasitic Mexican chicken bugs, and the risk factors associated with disease and ectoparasitism. Management to mitigate these threats requires first identifying and understanding factors that influence individual susceptibility within populations, and how eagles may adapt to these threats physiologically or mechanically through the use of aromatic nest material. Given the projections of current climate trends and the increasing human ecological footprint, monitoring threats to raptor populations and the ability of birds to respond to these threats, is important in a changing world.

Ben Dudek is a wildlife biologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. He earned his M.S. in Raptor Biology at Boise State University studying Golden Eagle nesting ecology in the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area in southwestern Idaho. Ben has worked with birds for organizations across the western United State including the Institute for Bird Populations, Hawkwatch International, and Yosemite National Park and he is a volunteer at Golden Gate Raptor Observatory.