I have a colleague who makes it a point to watch every sunrise and sunset. I am in awe of her, but I’m also simultaneously troubled and resigned by how Herculean this feat feels, especially as an early riser who lives in a moderate climate. How hard is it to stop what you’re doing for 10-15 minutes at the beginning and end of each day and to look outside and enjoy the show that nature offers us every day?
It’s Fogust here in the Outer Richmond neighborhood in San Francisco. Sunsets and sunrises have been hard to come by. But yesterday afternoon, the skies cleared, and by evening, it was glorious. I haven’t been walking much recently, but I’ve lived in this neighborhood long enough to know that, when there’s a reprieve in the summertime dreariness, you take advantage.
At Eagles Point Overlook at the start of the trail at Lands End, there was a scattering of people taking it all in, clearly waiting for the sun to set. I wondered whether any of those folks were like my colleague, ritualistically waiting for nature to call it a day, or whether they, like me, had decided that this Monday evening was too beautiful to waste inside. I ambled along slowly, stopping often to photograph the rays of golden light wafting through the trees or to watch flocks and flocks of pelicans gliding along the Bay toward the ocean.
For the past month, the whales have been putting on a show along the coast, and I had hoped to take a peek just in case. But about two-thirds of the way there, I felt the sunset calling to me, and I decided to take a detour down the long set of stairs to Mile Rock Beach to watch nature’s clock wind down. There would be no whales there, although if I were lucky, I might catch a sea lion bobbing in the waves, checking out all the strange bipeds congregating on the shore.
I didn’t see any sea lions, but the pelicans kept coming. I felt grateful for how reliably these prehistoric birds flew along these shores in their graceful lines and V-formations, and I thought about how this wasn’t the case not so long ago. These wonderful birds never failed to mesmerize me.
Folks had gathered here too, waiting as the sky changed colors and the waves softly crashed onto the sand. I watched a group of friends amble up a large rock as the sun began to disappear. They watched in wonder, then marked the moment with some selfies.
Beyond the pelicans and a pair of oystercatchers foraging for their supper, the only other animals I saw were these other humans who had been drawn, like me, to watch this quiet spectacle. I enjoyed it. How primal it is to watch the sun go down. How easy and sad it is that we suppress this instinct.
For most of my life, whenever I went on a walk, I would feel a pang of regret about not being able to identify trees or plants. Today, I passed 400 species observed on iNaturalist, 402 to be exact. I find this miraculous given how nature-blind I was up until four years ago. The silver lining of the pandemic was that I ended up learning a lot about birds and native plants, and I am deeply grateful for that.
I knew that they were swallows from their flight pattern, but I had never seen a flock of swallows just chilling out in a tree before. I’m used to Tree and Cliff Swallows, both of which tend to flutter about constantly and frenetically. I used Merlin to identify the exact species, which iNaturalist later confirmed. Then I just stood there with my Dad, watching them in wonder, before finally walking into the marsh to continue congregating with some other feathered friends.
Many thanks to Travis Kriplean, who helped catalyze my deep dive into the world around me by sharing his own journey so generously and comprehensively. I started my iNaturalist account in the Fall of 2000 with Travis’s encouragement and also with great skepticism, as I didn’t quite understand how iNaturalist worked, and the interface felt… challenging. I was dipping my toes into a mushrooming curriculum that Travis had developed, and I thought I would use iNaturalist to document my findings. I didn’t realize the giant nature-related U-turn I was about to take thanks to a run-in with a big, beautiful, brown bird.
I also have to give a lot of credit to Dario Taraborelli, who unwittingly primed me for all of this. I met Dario 15 years ago through Wikimedia, but I had no idea how much of a birder he was until I started following him on the Site Formerly Known As Twitter. (He, like me, is now mostly on Instagram.) He often posted glorious photos of birds, a stark and welcome contrast to the rest of my feed back in the day. He also sang the praises of iNaturalist, so much so that I knew about them well before I attempted to use the app.
Strangely enough, I don’t think this deep dive into nature would have been possible without iNaturalist and social media in general (and Instagram in particular). It still boggles my mind that iNaturalist’s interface manages to facilitate any kind of community, but it’s how I met Marisol Villareal, whose encouragement and engagement on Instagram helped me feel like I was a card-carrying member of a state-wide fan club, even though I’m still largely clueless. It’s how my friends, Jon and Linzy, met Rudy Wallen, an unassuming and generous nature savant, who also happens to live on our side of town. For all of the terrible that social media has wrought onto all of us, this is a great example of what social media can do when it works.
Up until a few years ago, I never noticed birds on my balcony. When I first started consciously paying attention to the birds at the start of the pandemic, I would occasionally hear a Dark-eyed Junco serenading me, but I never saw it unless I went onto my balcony and looked.
Then one day, I noticed a House Finch feeding on some chickweed growing in a pot with the dried up remnants of a neglected houseplant I had killed many years earlier. If a pot of weeds could attract birds, I wondered what native plants might do. A few weeks later, I populated my balcony with native plants and also put out a bird feeder.
Now the birds come every morning, even when I forget or can’t feed them. But when I do put out seeds, I am always amused and amazed by how quickly the birds come. They are obviously watching and listening.
The Dark-eyed Juncos are the first to arrive, followed by House Finches. Later in the morning, the doves arrive, eventually followed by the crows. I know most of the smaller birds are hanging out in nearby trees, although I wish I knew exactly where the juncos come from. The bigger birds are far less conspicuous.
After I put out my bird seed, I sometimes like to turn the tables on the birds, peering out into the neighboring landscape to see if I can spot them. The other morning, I decided to bring my camera with me to document some of my larger winged friends watching me from afar.
Last April, I went searching for river otters at Abbotts Lagoon in Point Reyes. It was part of the wonderful Point Reyes Birding & Nature Festival and led by Megan Isadore of the River Otter Ecology Project. Among the many wonderful things we saw on our ambling was this magnificent ravens’ nest on the face of a sheer cliff. We stared at it in awe for many minutes, marveling at the two large birds residing there and their remarkable feat of engineering.
Raven couple and their nest on the face of this cliff at Abbotts Lagoon in Point Reyes National Seashore, California.
Later, we came across a field biologist who was checking up on the Snowy Plovers. These adorable little birds inhabit many Bay Area beaches, where there are often fences attempting to protect their habitat. Unfortunately, there are only about 2,500 Snowy Plovers left on the West Coast, down from tens of thousands. Despite almost 40 years of protection, population recovery has been slow. Humans are the main reason why, but another nontrivial factor has been natural predation. And as we learned from the biologist, one of the most voracious predators of Snowy Plover eggs on that beach were those same ravens we were enjoying earlier.
I’m one of the thousands of folks who seem to have discovered birds for the first time during the pandemic. I’ve spent hours and hours and hours watching them in our garden and on the balcony outside of my office, and I’ve become familiar with many of them. I won’t lie, I usually greet them out loud when I see them, most often by their common name, but sometimes by names my partner and I have given them: Hoppy, Twisted Lip, Helen Hunt, etc.
The line between valuing and anthropomorphizing wildlife is a fine one. If you pay enough attention, you start to notice behavior that may feel unsavory to our human selves — bickering, bullying, and sometimes a lot worse. One time, I was at a red light on Martin Luther King, Jr. Way in Oakland, watching in horror as a murder of crows ganged up on an injured pigeon in the intersection. I wanted to get out of my car and chase the crows away, but the light turned green, and I ended up driving past, watching helplessly as the crows shifted their business to the sidewalk.
Corvids — including the ravens who snack on Snowy Plover eggs and the crows who bullied the poor pigeon — are large, social, and notoriously intelligent. They are marvelous birds, and, not surprisingly, many of their kind have adapted well to human development. Corvids are also known for theft and pedicide, often stealing hard-earned food from smaller birds or feasting on their hatchlings. It feels all too easy to pass judgement, but it doesn’t make any sense. Corvids are not people. This is what they do to survive. Moreover, many of the changes that we’ve made to the environment have served to amplify these “distasteful” behaviors.
On our river otter walk, Terrence Carroll (the Director of Research at River Otter Ecology Project and Isadore’s husband) explained that, over the past few years, river otters have been seen hunting and eating Brown Pelicans, one of the Endangered Species Act’s great success stories. According to Isadore, witnessing this is not for the weak of heart or stomach. The otters sneak up on the pelicans while they’re resting in the water, grab them by the leg and pull them under until they drown. They then drag them to shore, where they either consume them or stash them away in makeshift larders.
Angry birders who have found beaches strewn with pelican bodies have begun demanding that something be done about the otters. Carroll explained that we don’t know whether or not otter predation is having a significant impact on pelican populations. Their organization has applied for grants to try and study this. Regardless of what they find, the anger seems misguided. Ravens eat Snowy Plover eggs. River otters (which themselves have only recently returned to the Bay Area after disappearing for decades due to pollution) eat shorebirds, including Brown Pelicans. That is in their nature, and this is how nature works. The main reason the Brown Pelicans were and the Snowy Plovers are endangered is us — we human beings and our ongoing attempts to co-opt rather than co-exist with nature.
I’m still learning this lesson. I try not to project my human code of ethics onto wildlife, but I also have the opportunity to create my own space that encourages co-existence in a way that seems palatable to everyone. Early in my birder evolution, I started experimenting with bird feeders. Inspired by my friends, Jon and Linzy, I started by tying an old frying pan to a tree and filling it with sunflower seeds. That enabled me to see what felt like a wondrous number of birds in our backyards, and it also acquainted me with a familiar bird feeder foe: Sammy the Squirrel. (I name all squirrels I see, “Sammy.”)
Many of my early design experiments were spent trying to fend off Sammy. (Yes, I’ve seen the Marc Robervideo on deterring squirrels, and yes, it’s amazing.) However, over time, I shifted my attention to creating harmony among the many different bird species who visit my feeders and baths. I noticed that bigger birds sometimes dominate the feeders, chasing away (or worse) the smaller birds, so I created a tube feeder that only smaller songbirds could access. I noticed that a small single point of access would cause the smaller songbirds to fight with each other, so I strategically placed branches nearby where the birds could queue up.
Tube feeder I designed for small songbirds. There are two slots (carved in the shapes of a House Finch and a chickadee) covered in hardware cloth and a couple of branches to let the birds queue up. Larger birds and sparrows can’t balance themselves on the feeder or fit their beaks through the hardware cloth.
Hummingbirds are viciously territorial, and I often saw them fighting over our two feeders. Earlier this year, I visited bird illustrator Keith Hansen’s studio in Bolinas and noticed to my surprise that the hummingbirds fed side-by-side in harmony at his feeders. He has found that if you have at least six feeders up, the hummingbirds decide that there’s enough for everybody, and they cooperate rather than fight.
Structures impact behavior. I have always applied this principle in my work of getting people to collaborate more effectively with each other, but watching birds over the past few years have caused me to appreciate this even more. On my small balcony, I have managed to create my own little ecosystem of birds and nature. I have two feeders and two small bowls, which I regularly fill with clean water for drinking and bathing. I designed and placed them strategically among my pots of native plants to favor different kinds of birds so that there’s enough food and water for everybody.
The House Finches and Mourning Doves hang out on my balcony year-round, and a wide variety of birds visit regularly depending on the season — sparrows, Lesser Goldfinches, Chestnut-Backed Chickadees, hummingbirds, Scrub Jays, Brewer’s Blackbirds. I have a few individual stragglers as well, from the Dark-eyed Junco that serenades me almost every morning to the Yellow-Rumped Warbler (i.e. “Butter Butt”) who seems to enjoy the company of my bird cohort, even though their kind don’t traditionally visit feeders. I don’t know why, but the ubiquitous city pigeons mostly stay away, with the exception of one goofy couple that makes me chuckle every time I see them.
When the crows started coming, I had mixed feelings, as I was afraid they would scare away all the other birds. But I observed them for a while, and I came to love them. There are a few who now recognize me, and when I see them, I often take a short break to step out onto my balcony and feed them peanuts. A few of their cousins, the raven, even come by every so often, including an affectionate couple, and I’ve been able to marvel at their size and beauty up close.
Ravens cuddling on my balcony.
Last year, I was on a client call, when I heard a loud thunk outside. I looked outside, and to my surprise, a Cooper’s Hawk was sitting about ten feet away from me. It took all of my willpower not to jump off the call and grab my camera. Fortunately, the hawk and its mate became regular visitors, and I was able to watch them with interest. I didn’t want my balcony to become a restaurant for these raptors, which love to feast on Mourning Doves, although I was open to it happening. However, while the ongoing activity continued to attract the hawks’ interest, it turned out that some combination of my balcony’s proximity (which made it hard for the predators to sneak up on other birds) and my crow friends (who were used to warding off fiercer, larger birds) kept them at bay.
Cooper’s Hawk on my balcony!
It’s not my place to dictate whether or not a bird eats or bullies another bird. However, I think it’s fair for me to be thoughtful about how I can positively impact an ecosystem by learning as much as possible about these wonderful feathered creatures and by loving them without anthropomorphizing them.
I’m not going to stop naming them, however, or saying hello when I see them. I have to draw the line somewhere!
A few years ago, my friend and long-time checkin partner, Kate, told me about seeing a hummingbird resting on a branch overhead, and how surprised she was, since she associated hummingbirds with, well, humming — constantly flitting about, with their wings moving blurringly fast. I was struck by this observation, because I had never seen a hummingbird resting before, and I suppose I had foolishly assumed that they simply never stopped going, going, going.
It turns out that the opposite is true. Hummingbirds spend the majority of their time sitting, because flying consumes an enormous amount of energy.
My partner has Mexican bush sage in her backyard, which is essentially nature’s hummingbird feeder. They absolutely love them. Whenever possible, I sit in her backyard, just waiting and watching. It never takes long for a hummingbird to swing by, moving from flower to flower before flying off.
This morning, I stepped out as the clouds moved ominously overhead, hoping to take in a few breaths outdoors before the rain came down. I watched a hummingbird swoop in, quickly moving from flower to flower, sucking on the nectar. Then it moved to a nearby tree and perched on a branch overhead. I watched it in wonder as it sat… and sat… and sat.