SF Bird Club August Newsletter

July Recap

In case you missed it you can find last month's newsletter here: july newsletter

july movie club

Okay last month's theme was kind of a bust; even I didn't watch the movie but I hope some people still managed to spot some of our wild parrots here in the city.
I've had a noisy pair of them stop by my roof for a few minutes each morning for the last couple weeks

But more on these guys later

red-masked parakeet (Psittacara erythrogenys)

Member Submissions

Thank you to everyone who sent me photos of the birds they saw!

Starting off strong Gus and Anjali up in Seattle sent in easily one of the coolest submissions I've received. They saw a collection of great blue heron nests and a bald eagle sitting in one of the nests disturbing them. In the video you can hear the gutteral screams of the herons. Really cool stuff I wish I could post videos but here is a screenshot

bald eagle and great blue heron — bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and great blue heron (Ardea herodias)
you can see the eagle on the left and one of the herons on the right

George saw a robin's nest with nestlings up by Tahoe

american robin (Turdus migratorius) nestlings

James and Emily had a bunch of cool sightings. Firstly they were on hawk watch over at ocean beach and got some rad photos of a red-tailed hawk.

hawk mobbed — the hawk getting mobbed by a gull

they also nabbed some nice sightings of robins, pigeons and ravens

absolute unit of a band-tailed pigeon (Patagioenas fasciata) in pasadena

Ani also saw a red-tailed hawk this one in NYC during a walk with the McGorlick bird club

Kelly's cat watched an unidentified bird

Jenn's cat is back this month with some more birdwatching spotting some titmice and sparrows

cat — this is a screenshot from a pretty cute video

sparrows — i think im going to get one of these bird feeders but im worried it will plop off and hit someone walking on the sidewalk

Adam continues to send terrible photos of awesome birds. Previously he got a grainy shot of a Phainopepla and this month he got a worse shot of a pileated woodpecker over in castle rock down in the south bay

pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)

he also spotted either a cooper's hawk (Astur cooperii) or a sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus) i think it is a coopers

Aarsh had some nice sightings including another hawk I can't tell between coopers and sharp shinned im just going to say coopers again. He also saw finches and a black swan in a pond across the pond in shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon

pair of house finches (Haemorhous mexicanus)

Hannah spotted a red-crested cardinal in Hawaii

I have a few sightings to share myself. I'll start with a very sad one - I noticed a red-tailed hawk with a pretty bad case of avian keratin disorder (AKD) also called long-billed hawk syndrome. AKD appears to be a growing concern with our raptors and is currently being researched in studies like this one here

On a more positive note in the world of raptors I spotted this osprey by donner lake up in the tahoe area

Spotlight Bird: red-masked parakeet aka cherry-headed conure (Psittacara erythrogenys)

This month's bird of the month is our famous san francisco parrots.

Fun red-masked parakeet Facts:

they are the official animal of sf
they are native to ecuador and peru
supposedly they mostly arrived here in sf in the 1990s; at least on telegraph hill specifically
apparently a mitred conure bred with the cherry heads and now there are a bunch of hybrids. the pictures im showing might actually be the hybrids or they're really the cherry heads idk
they are pretty loud especially when they are on my roof
they can live for 50+ years

August Bird Walk

It's time for another birding walk! location tbd but it will be in sf again

The birding walk will be on the sunday morning of August 17th. Head to the partiful link for more info and I'll update it with a more exact location closer to the date.

Closeout

That's all; happy birding