For a while I thought this was just a symptom of getting older, but really... it's not. I kept thinking about how this or that place used to be so much nicer, how it seemed like there were more birds there, and sorta chalked it up warm-n-fuzzy nostalgia. A few things coalesced and brought it into focus; it's not nostalgia. And the need to push back is as great as ever.
I'll start with the good (and intertwine enough of it to remain hopeful). I spent yesterday at a UC Research Station/preserve near Hopland, CA, helping a friend tend to kestrel nest boxes as part of a long term study she's doing. It was overcast, and it was beautiful. (after all, it's Mendocino County)
The view from the the road in.... (larger version)
Not so many birds in the diary today because the conditions weren't ideal for taking their pictures. But the conditions were pretty great for them to just be there and live their lives. (I wrote about the reserve, and the kestrel project last year.) Abundant food and water, lots of places to build nests and raise families, quiet enough for a song to be heard... a landscape with a very light human footprint. In other words, a place increasingly rare in our world.
Golden Eagle nest - we could see new greenery had been added, a sign that the pair is here and active.
Sure, there are places that humans haven't overrun, but many of those places are marginal, with few resources to sustain life. Most of the places with abundant resources have been claimed by our voracious species, sometimes to provide our own food or raise our own families (something the wildlife might understand), but often for roads and factories and airports and resorts and other things that would seem pretty abstract to most others species.
Some man-made structures are practical for birds, though they may find different uses than we intended. This box had been emptied of acorns just two weeks ago, and they already refilled it this far. I asked if Acorn Woodpeckers were being studied at Hopland because there are so many of them - it turns out the studies are happening at a different preserve, because there are too many of them at Hopland to be able to follow them.
Right before I left for my day's adventure, I read this diary by mahakali overdrive (opens in new window) about Shollenberger Park - a place I drove past as I headed north on 101 Saturday. It's a wetlands with trails, where the northern fringes of the San Francisco bay make contact with the southern fringes of the Redwood Empire. It's home to a lot of wildlife, including many wonderful birds. But someone has a better idea for this patch of land - an asphalt plant. On March 16, it comes up for a vote. It would be great if the animals (and their human allies) won this one.
A grand old California oak... disappearing steadily around our state.
The Hopland field station has many of the rolling oak woodlands and grassy valleys that once covered California. The oak hillsides were turned into vineyards and cattle moved from grassy rangeland to feedlots. The residual bits of open range still support a lot of birdlife, including some of my favorite birding areas around here: the Montezuma Hills and southern Solano county, Mines Road/San Antonio Valley/Del Puerto Canyon, and Panoche Valley. Hopland is part of the UC system and used for long-term studies; its future should be safe.
The other three areas were being encroached upon by housing - at least until the real estate crash. They get a little breathing room for now, although a huge, ill-sited solar development now threatens Panoche from the other direction, something I mentioned in my diary a few weeks ago. (Next month, I'm headed to Anza-Borrego, another spot threatened by a large scale solar plant.)
Not a bird, but pretty cool... a skink, whose juvenile blue tail is changing into adult colors.
Closer to home, the city of San Francisco is talking about building soccer fields - with an artificial playing surface - at the far west end of Golden Gate Park. This part of the park has been left wilder vs. the more manicured eastern end, so it supports more wildlife. Artficial fields mean that the robins can't forage on the grass in the early morning; larger crowds mean more trash which means more scavengers like raccoons and rats in the area (hard on nesting birds), and new lighting to extend activities in the area means it will be less suitable for nesting.
As each one of these developments occurs, it's possible to say "Well, it's only 1000 acres." Or a hundred acres. Or ten acres. Or one acre. It's just a little bit that's being developed. But then what's left? Only a thousand acres, then a hundred, then ten...
I'd look annoyed too, if I was being squeezed into ever smaller spots.
I hope that Hopland will remain as a place to study California biology over the long term, instead of a living museum of a place that once was.