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General Meetings
Held the third Wednesday of each month except June, July, August, and December at 7:00 pm for social time and 7:30 pm for the program at Eaton Canyon Nature Center, 1750 North Altadena Drive, Pasadena.
Directions to Eaton Canyon
Current Program
The Cactus Wren of Southern California
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Dan Cooper
Perhaps the most imperiled resident bird on the coastal slope of Southern California has no legal status in Los Angeles County, but growing numbers of biologists and volunteers are joining together to study and protect fragile populations of Cactus Wren anyway!
We will examine places where these fascinating birds are found around the Southland, with an emphasis on Los Angeles County, take inventory of the forces that seem to be aligned against the wrens, and finish by reviewing conservation strategies that are being devised and implemented to give those tenacious birds a fighting chance.
Dan Cooper is the founder of Cooper Ecological Monitoring Inc. and is the author of Important Bird Areas of California
Upcoming Programs
Shakespeare's Birds
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Dr. Martin Hyatt
Birds have magical qualities. They fly, they sing, and they anticipate the seasons. They have inspired artists and writers in every age and society. Shakespeare filled his works with bird imagery, drawing upon reniassance, medieval, Roman, Greek, and biblical sources, as well as his own experience, mentioning over 60 different species. At the start of Shakepeare's career, he was labeled an "upstart crow", and after his death, he was eulogized as the "swan of Avon". Understanding the literary traditions involving birds leads to some surprising discoveries about Shakespeare and his works.
Dr. Martin Hyatt is a biologist who has tracked radio-tagged homing pigeons from a small plane and chased down gorged albatrosses from an inflatable boat. Now, he pursues Shakespeare's birds.
Birding Among the Beasts
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Susan & Frank GIlliland, Mark & Janet Scheel, Kathi Ellsworth, Lance Benner, Jon Feenstra, Marilyn Morgan, Larry Allen, Russell Kokz
With its unique animals, East Africa has long been part of every traveler's dreams. The large mammals are easily summoned to mind (big scary cats anyone?). But Tanzania is also a land of vast landscapes, rolling grasslands dotted with acacia and baobab trees and endless horizons. It is also home to one of the seven summits, Mount Kilimanjaro, and to Lake Victoria, the second largest lake in the world.
And did we mention that there are more than 1000 species of birds?
Join Pasadena's Pride as they share photos from one of the best places in the world for nature and bird watching.
Special Events
The Wrentit Club
All year
Pasadena Audubon Society is promoting eBird and the new
"Wrentit Club". The idea is simple: Identify as many species of bird in Los Angeles County for the calendar year 2012 as you can. Then, submit your year-list to WrentitClub@PasadenaAudubon.org. Sound easy so far?
After all the lists are submitted, we will
tally and award the following:
- 50-99 The Finches
- 100-140 The Rails
- 150-199 The Vireos
- 200-249 The Owls
- 250+ The Wrentit Club
We will list your total award on a perpetual list/board.
Feel daunted? Don't! Our field trips will indicate
if they count towards your Wrentit Club total (look
for the "WC" icon!) and you are invited to contact John Garrett,
Mark Scheel, or Ron Cyger for tips and recommendations.
So, beginning January 1, 2012, begin tallying! Use of eBird
is not required. But, if you use eBird
( www.eBird.org )
enter your bird lists, it will automatically generate
your year list for LA County, help researchers study
population trends, and gain you brownie points.
Ron Cyger, John Garrett, and Mark Scheel
So, you want to get involved in the Wrentit Club, but are not sure how to get started with eBird?
- Tip #1: Create an eBird account
- Tip #2 Submit a checklist of birds
- Tip #3: Casual Observation and effort
When do I use "Casual Observation" as opposed to the other options?
Letting
us know how you went birding is an important part of completing the data
entry process. By filling out simple effort information we can learn more
about the presence of birds in your area. For example, if you simply choose
"Casual Observation" when in fact you did something more rigorous, we won't
know because you are not required to fill out the effort information. You
might have seen a Bald Eagle fly over your car on the way to work in the
morning, which is truly a casual observation. This is valuable information.
It tells us that a species was at a location on a specific date. On the
other hand you might have seen a Bald Eagle while birding for an hour at
your local refuge and you might have reported all the species you observed,
but still selected "Casual Observation" as the methodology. By submitting a
complete checklist of birds and telling us how much time you spent and how
you collected the data, we can learn much more about the birds in your area.
If you answer "yes" to the question, "Are you reporting all the species you
observed," then you definitely didn't perform a casual observation! From
this type of observation we can learn about the abundance of Bald Eagle
relative to the other species on the checklist, and we can know how much
time you spent trying to find the birds on that checklist, which provides
information on detectability. Think about how easy it is to spot and eagle
compared with say, a rail! If you still choose "Casual Observation" as the
type of observation, these important data will not be included in many of
our analyses and output tools. Be sure to understand the type of survey
you're conducting, and don't be afraid to choose something more rigorous
than "Casual Observation," especially when you are the ones doing all the
work! Read more about this.
What do you mean by "effort" and why do I have to enter time and distance
information?
Information about how much time you spent watching birds and
how far you traveled will help us determine the relative abundance of the
birds you reported. For example, finding 50 Black-capped Chickadees in 15
minutes while standing in one place indicates a much different density of
chickadees than if you recorded 50 Black-capped Chickadees in four hours
while driving 10 miles. Without the time and distance information, eBird
biologists won't be able to make a reliable estimate of density.
- Tip #4: eBird Alerts
A new feature of eBird is *eBird Alerts*. This service will email you on a
regular basis with birds seen in a state that are not on you eBird list
(another good reason to keep up your eBird list).
Go to http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/subscribe-to-ebird-alerts and sign
up.
Then, when you receive the reports from eBird, simply search for "angeles"
to jump to the Los Angeles County reports (or search in any other way to
meet your needs).
Great way to be the first (or, actually second) to know about a bird!
- eBird, L. A. County, and the New Year
by Kimball Garrett
L. A. County observers:
In this New Year it is clear - and gratifying - that many observers have
begun to submit their observations to eBird for the first time. Along
with the stalwarts who began contributing to eBird in previous years,
this new infusion of support makes Los Angeles County a continuing
leader in generation of data for eBird. California is usually the
leading state for eBird submissions, and Los Angeles County usually
leads in California. You are all to thank for our position as,
arguably, the most active region in the world on eBird.
This seems like an opportune time to remind eBird users - new and old -
about the importance of maintaining the "cleanest" possible data set. A
few recurring types of errors occur in checklist submission and I urge
all observers to take care to avoid these. These largely fall under the
categories of (1) improper use of eBird; (2) mis-entry of data; and (3)
misidentification or lack of documentation. As Los Angeles County
eBird reviewers, John Garrett and I spend a great deal of time dealing
with these sorts of errors, so these education efforts are partly in
self-defense.
First, eBird is designed for the entry of a list of birds encountered at
a SPECIFIC LOCATION within a SPECIFIC CALENDAR DAY. Obviously one's
definition of "specific location" will need to be flexible, but very
large areas (such as lumping together sites in the Antelope Valley
separated by 20-30 miles, or the length of the Angeles Crest Highway
through the San Gabriel Mtns.) are inappropriate for entry via a single
checklist. Please consider making separate checklists for each site you
visit - the data are more useful and your birding improves because you
can associate distinct avifaunas with specific sites. Checklists must
be submitted for a given calendar day (in almost all cases, of course, a
shorter period within that day); never use eBird to enter a month list,
county list, life list, or other such cumulative list (and remember that
one great thing about eBird is that it will keep such lists for you,
based on day/locality checklists you enter).
When submitting a checklist for an area, try to use an existing "Hot
Spot" (a public or "shared" locality) when one exists. This is best
done by clicking on "Find it on a map" and zooming in until you find the
locality where you were birding. You should periodically review your
personal eBird localities and consider merging them with existing Hot
Spots if appropriate. When plotting a NEW locality, it is critical that
you zoom in as close as possible to plot the marker - one of our biggest
headaches is the mapping of localities miles from where they really are
because the location was misplotted.
When you enter a checklist, ALWAYS review the list before submitting it.
Did you select the correct location and the correct date? (with eBird
pull-down menus, it's not hard to click on the wrong item). Did you
enter the correct species? The "filters" will catch some such errors,
but if you meant to enter 100 Double-crested Cormorants and
inadvertently entered 100 Brandt's Cormorants the filters will never
catch that error - if the locality was coastal the error will probably
never be caught, and if the locality was inland you'll be getting a very
skeptical query from us about your unprecedented inland sighting of
Brandt's Cormorants.
Far and away the biggest issue with eBird data is accuracy in
identification. The checklist you see when you enter data is limited to
the species most expected in the county during that month. But even
within that checklist of "Probable species" there is great potential for
error. Los Angeles County is geographically complex, and just because
Le Conte's Thrasher is on the "probable" checklist, it is still very
restricted in its range. We're constantly seeing entries of species well
out of range (e.g. California Gnatcatchers on the Malibu coast, Verdins
in the San Gabriel Valley, Brandt's Cormorants in the L. A. Basin, etc.)
- these are not flagged by the "filters" so we need to spend a lot of
time reviewing maps for outliers. Bird identification isn't always
easy, but at a minimum please limit your entries to identifications you
are confident of. Very often when we query an observer about an unusual
record they respond by saying they weren't sure what the bird was but
the species they entered seemed like a good possibility; it's OK to
leave such "uncertains" off your entered list (in fact, we insist on
it...).
But birds do move around and show up in odd places. Many of the records
entered into eBird are of legitimate out-of-range birds. Such species
will trigger a prompt that asks you if you are certain of your
identification; if the observer confirms the entry the record goes into
a queue of "flagged" records for our review. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE
make our job easier by providing documentation in the form of notes on
your eBird checklist about these unusual records. Did you know the
record was unusual? How did you document this unusual record (photos?
written description/ sketches? ) What were the characters that allowed
you to distinguish the bird from similar species? We send queries to
observers about their flagged records, and if no documentation exists we
will likely invalidate the sighting - which is not to say that we are
certain the bird was misidentified, but simply that it is undocumented.
Very often documentation (especially photos) confirm the identifications
of rarities; we need to know that such documentation exists. For
species reviewed by the California Bird Records Committee we will always
abide by CBRC decisions (i.e., validating CBRC-accepted records and
invalidating records that are not accepted based on identification or
natural origin). On rare occasion we will invalidate entire checklists
when it is clear that the observer is unable to correctly identify
birds.
Finally, we have noticed that many of the eBird errors are a by-product
of the bulk-upload of data from other checklist software; the reasons
aren't always clear, and the eBird staff is working to reduce such
glitches. If you use bulk uploads, PLEASE go to "Manage My
Observations" and check those lists for errors.
Thanks to all of you for contributing to a vast and growing database of
the birds of Los Angeles County. While we already have one of the most
thorough datasets in the world, with the above suggestions we can all
continue to improve its accuracy.
Birding 101
March-April 2012
Birding provides enjoyment and challege throughout your life. Birding gets you outdoors on your street or around the world, increases your ability to observe the world around you, increases your appreciation of nature, and is darned fun. So, why put off learning how to be a better birder any longer?
This class is designed for beginners, but all are welcome. We will cover identification, optics, field guides, note-taking, habitats, birding ethics, and many other topics. Class size is limited, so don't delay!
Class-room sessions are at 7:00pm-9:00pm on Tuesdays March 20, 27, and April 3, 2012. Field trips are on Sunday March 25 and Saturday March 31, 2012, 8:00 am to noon. Location of the class and field trips will be sent to the class participants.
Cost: $40 for Pasadena Audubon members, $60 for non-members (which will include membership). This fee will cover all three classes and two field trips. Payment is payable to "Pasadena Audubon Society" and is due at the first class session.
Leaders: Ron Cyger and Mark Scheel. For questions or to make reservations, contact Mark and Ron at Birding101@pasadenaaudubon.org.
Sponsored by Pasadena Audubon Society and Eaton Canyon Nature
Center
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