The U.S. breeding population of elegant terns, which first appeared in the 1950′s,  is increasing. Last year there were 10,000 pairs at Bolsa Chica, and in 2010 there were 20,000 pairs at the San Diego Salt Works, the other U.S. breeding site. They have also been showing up in increasing numbers in northern California.  (Photo [...]

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Our colleagues at the Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary recently held a volunteer bird banding event and got some great birds. Among the finds were Spotted Towhee, Orange-crowned Warbler, Bewick’s Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Yellow-rumped Warbler and Chestnut-back Chickadee — a total of 34 birds in all. And, of course, they were all sent on [...]

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This should interest anyone who has been following the Audubon Starr Ranch Barn Owl webcam. The Orange County Register was out at the ranch this weekend covering a bird-banding event for the owls and they shot some cool video: Share on Facebook

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A majority of California Assembly Members have signed on to a letter demanding the resignation of Fish and Game Commission President Dan Richards. Although the letter has no legal weight, it could portend a legislative effort to remove the official. Richards, you may recall, drew harsh criticism when he was photographed posing with with a [...]

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While some of us at Audubon California are sitting at our desks writing blog posts, a good number of our staff are out in the field. the photos below are from our ongoing monitoring of experiments to see how birds respond to varying levels of water left in Central Valley rice fields. Usual practice is [...]

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California birds need your help to reduce a dangerous threat to their survival. Poisoning from lead ammunition left behind in the environment poses a grave danger to rare birds such as the California Condor and the Golden Eagle, as well as to more common birds such as the Mourning Dove and the California Quail. Failure [...]

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According to a new article on Wired.com, Stefano Marras of the University of Montpellier and Maurizio Porfiri of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, studied the behavior of fish around a robotic “overlord.” The researchers found the impostor fish were able to convince the real fish to follow them. We wonder if this would work with robotic bird [...]

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California Fish and Game Commission President Dan Richards is getting a lot of flack for a mountain lion hunt he recently did in Idaho. It’s not that the hunt was illegal — it wasn’t — rather it was the perception that he was flouting that he was “thumbing his nose” at the California voters that [...]

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Want to see a lot of blackbirds? Well, look no further. Keiller Kyle, our Tricolored Blackbird conservation coordinator, was in northern Kern County recently and spotted this giant mixed flock of blackbirds – including Brewer’s, Red-winged, and Tricolored. Not long ago, a series of videos documenting the murmurations of European Starlings were a hit on [...]

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Today, Audubon and the Portland Audubon Society submitted comments on an application for a permit that would allow the death or disturbance of Golden Eagles at a proposed new wind development near Bend, Oregon. The issuance of this permit potentially represents a major turning point in the development of alternative energy and its impacts on [...]

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The Los Angeles Times reports today that two more Golden Eagles have been found dead at the Pine Tree wind development in the Tehachapi Mountains, bringing the total number of eagles found there to eight. Given that it is illegal to kill Golden Eagles, this could present a profound legal problem for the operators of [...]

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New protected areas for marine birds and other wildlife along the southern California coast seem to be a success, according to Anna Weinstein, Audubon California’s seabird conservation coordinator. “From all reports, things are going as well as can be expected. We’re seeing widespread observance of the protected areas.” Weinstein attributes the early success of the [...]

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PG&E  celebrated the Wildlife Habitat Council’s Community Partner of the Year award co-won by Audubon California’s Landowner Stewardship Program and the Center for Land-Based Learning with a presentation of the award to the two partner organizations at PG&E’s property in Pleasant Creek in Yolo County on Wednesday, February 8. The prestigious award was given out [...]

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Recently the journal Science, the world’s most prestigious scientific publication, published “Global seabird response to forage fish depletion – one-third for the birds.”  In addition to having an unusually catchy title, this paradigm-shifting study serves to underscore the importance of leaving plenty of fish in the sea for our seabirds and other marine wildlife. Photo [...]

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Audubon California’s Monica Iglecia talks about the importance of rice farms to Central Valley shorebirds in this video created by the California Rice Commission: Share on Facebook

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