Audubon California has joined with The Nature Conservancy and PRBO Conservation Science on a landmark project to help migratory birds in California. While you’ll be hearing a great deal more about this project in the coming months, our website has a good overview of the work we’re doing. (photo by Alison Sheehey)
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Audubon California and PRBO Conservation Science recently held two shorebird survey training workshops at the Yolo Wildlife Area and Cosumnes River Preserve. As thousands of Arctic-breeding shorebirds descend upon the Central Valley in the coming weeks, these volunteers will collect valuable data about how these birds use flooded fallow rice fields for habitat. The monitoring [...]

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Representatives from PG&E and Lodi wine growers are spreading the word that placing Barn Owl boxes near power poles increases the risk of electrocutions. Several owls have perished on power poles in the recent weeks.
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Interesting story out of the Gulf today, where a federal agency is asking some farmers to flood their fields in the hopes of convincing migratory birds to stop there instead of the oil-tainted waters of the Gulf. This strategy reminds us of what is happening in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where rice and alfalfa farms [...]

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So conservationists and farmers don’t always get along — that’s not news, certainly not in the Central Valley. But as Audubon California has learned with its various landowner programs over the past few years, there are plenty of opportunities for the two to partner on projects to have benefits for both agriculture and the environment. [...]

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Audubon California’s Landowner Stewardship Program, based in Winters, just finished three days out in the sun, wind and rain searching for blue oak seedlings. We found Lark Sparrow nests, were serenaded by Western Meadowlarks, saw Yellow-billed Magpies scolding one another and, in one plot alone, counted 61 adult blue oak trees. The volunteers were incredibly [...]

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We’re getting reports that Tricolored Blackbirds are beginning to form their massive nesting colonies in California. As you may know, this particular species forms colonies with as many as 80,000 birds – a total that can equal up to quarter of the entire worldwide population of this near-endemic species. As you may know, the problem [...]

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Of the 14 sites proposed to become national monuments or be expanded due to presidential order, four are in California. Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly, one of these is the Berryessa area, just west of Winters. This is right near Audubon California’s Bobcat Ranch and, as the article notes, one of the few relatively pristine [...]

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Last week, high school students from Sacramento descended on a field just outside of Winters and got a hands-on lesson in habitat restoration. Check out the video:

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Students from Grant High School in Sacramento yesterday took part in a habitat restoration project near Winters as part of a partnership between Audubon California and the Center for Lang-based Learning. We took a lot of photos and video, but until we get all that sorted out, check out the great article in today’s Sacramento Bee.
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“When I first came here, the emphasis was on planting trees,” says Reed Tollefson, who has been the manager of the Audubon Kern River Preserve for the last 17 years, through ownership by The Nature Conservancy and Audubon California. “Now it’s protecting all this land around us.” Tollefson’s experience at the Preserve is an education [...]

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After recognizing the significant threat to nesting birds posed by the annual spring and summer tree trimming conducted by the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Audubon Society put out a nifty guide to bird-friendly tree trimming. The guide targets the Los Angeles County area, but a lot of the information applies to just about [...]

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Audubon California’s Pete Desimone, manager of the Starr Ranch Sanctuary in Orange County, is quoted in today’s Los Angeles Times talking about how Orange County should develop a habitat management plan before accepting a 20,000-acre gift from the Irvine Company. Representatives of other conservation groups are quoting saying that unless the funding is there for [...]

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Here’s what we’ve seen at our sites around California:

Morro Bay: The four inches of rain that Morro Bay received on Tuesday have put the estuary completely underwater as creeks rushed into the bay and there are thousands of birds visible everywhere (gulls, egrets, shorebirds) feeding off all the food that has been exposed.
Bobcat Ranch (Yolo): [...]

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A Sacramento Valley project that trains young people in real-life conservation skills while at the same time improving wildlife habitat will receive a boost from a new TogetherGreen national innovation grant. Audubon California has partnered with the Center for Land-Based Learning’s Student and Landowner Education and Watershed Stewardship (SLEWS) program to get teens out on [...]

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