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APRIL –J U N E 2012
A N E X P LO R AT I O N O F N AT U R E I N T H E S A N F R A N C I S C O B AY A R E A
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The Parks and The People Keeping State Parks Alive
The Forager’s Dilemma The Sandhills of Santa Cruz Reclaiming the Richmond Shoreline
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by melati kaye
co n s er vat ion in a c t i o n
Melati Kaye
Safe Fishing with Kids for the Bay
Students at Oakland’s Cox Academy conduct an experi-
“If you throw something on Foothill Boulevard, how does it end up in the Pacific Ocean?” asks Jonah Yamagata. Hands shoot up. “The wind can blow it,” says Angel Gutierrez. “Into storm drains,” Timothy Courtney pipes up. Yamagata nods. “And from there it goes into the creek and then to a large body that looks like a mermaid from outer space . . . who can tell me what that is called?” All kids call in unison: “The San Francisco Bay!” This is Rebecca Schramm’s thirdgrade class at East Oakland’s Cox Academy. Yamagata is an instructor with Kids for the Bay, a nonprofit that provides science and environmental education programs to low-income East Bay schools. But there’s a twist to the curriculum: A core concept is environmental justice, with a focus on the dangers of eating Bay-caught fish, which often make up part of the diet for immigrant families here. Schramm says that even though the kids are often still learning English, they get it. “The feedback often comes the next day,” she says. “We’ll be lining up on the playground, and someone will see a stray candy wrapper and ask to remove it before it goes into a storm drain.” b ay n at u r e
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ment to learn how pollution can drain into the Bay.
The Kids for the Bay definition of pollution is broader than stray candy wrappers. Instructors use a map to show 37 Superfund sites around the Bay, and they explain how six active oil refineries make Contra Costa the country’s second most industrialized county. All that industry means lots of pollutants. Take polychlorinated biphenyls (pcbs): Linked to cancer and other ailments, they still persist in the Bay long after they were phased out in 1979. Mercury, from both present-day industry and old mining runoff, also accumulates in fish and can affect brain development in people. A 2011 survey by the state Water Resources Control Board showed eight of California’s 42 most popular fishing areas were so contaminated that fish caught there were “inedibly toxic.” “I hate to suggest an outright ban on eating fish,” says Dick Jackson, chair of the University of California, Los Angeles Environmental Health Sciences department. “Traditionally it is poor people who fish in San Francisco Bay — meeting recreational and nutritional needs at the same time.”
Torm Nompraseurt knows this firsthand. One of the first Laotians to settle in Contra Costa in 1975, he now serves as a policy advocate at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. “For Laotians, fishing is not just a sport,” he says. “It is to feed family. People always want to bring a big fish home. But here in the Bay Area, bigger fish means more accumulation, more problems.” In the mid-90s, Nompraseurt’s group ran “toxic tours,” combining human anatomy lessons with neighborhood walkabouts. The results were mixed, Nompraseurt reports: “Some believed, some didn’t. Some believed for a while.” Kids for the Bay aims to speed up and strengthen community awareness by starting young. The program’s curriculum begins by showing kids a view of San Francisco Bay from space. Coming down to earth, the class goes on a field trip to the Berkeley pier, where students pool their collective language ability to interview anglers. They also survey their own families’ fishing habits. Finally, at the end of the sessions, students take a turn at teaching. At a school open house, they don aprons and demonstrate safe practices—filleting fish to avoid moretoxic organs and eating sea-dwellers like brown rockfish. At a fifth-grade class at Franklin Elementary near Lake Merritt, Kids for the Bay instructor Deborah Zierten distributes tubs of crabs and striped bass. A girl holds up her fish and plays with its tail. “Look, it’s like Finding Nemo!” Another gags as she prods the crab in her tray. “Remember,” says Zierten, “scientists don’t say ‘ugh.’ Who can tell me if they have a male or a female crab?” Hands shoot up. One student, pointing to his crab’s abdomen, calls out, “I did this in third grade. If this thingamabob is longer or shorter you can tell that it is a male or a female.” That kind of knowledge might come in handy when the kids interview anglers over the next few weeks. And when they grow up and start raising, and feeding, their own families. Learn more at kidsforthebay.org.
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on the trail
Ponderosa pines (background) grow at unusually low elevations in the Sandhills. In spring, this rare habitat is
Jodi M. McGraw, jodimcgrawconsulting.com
awash in flowers, such as these California goldfields.
THE RARE SANTA CRUZ SANDHILLS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM by Marilyn Fahey I never thought it would come to this: me killing a tree. Especially such a pretty one. Acacia dealbata — native to Australia, and probably planted here in the Sandhills of the Santa Cruz Mountains by past settlers or miners — no one knows for sure. Big, b ay n at u r e
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shady, and fast-growing, the acacia swarms with wide lacy leaves that fall to the ground and create a carpet of nutrient-rich duff — which is why it’s got to go. Trees like this acacia don’t belong here in the Sandhills — exposed rem-
nants of an ancient seabed now four miles from shore, located in and around the town of Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz County. Here in the Sandhills, an ecosystem has developed that is remarkably different from the surrounding habitats of mixed evergreen forest, with plants and animals that have evolved to survive in the porous, nutrient-lean sandy soil. Some of those creatures are found nowhere else in the world. And ponderosa pines grow here but are virtually never seen elsewhere in California at such low elevations. Once covering 6,000 to 7,000 acres, the Sandhills are now down to 4,000 (including only 2,500 that are completely undeveloped), displaced by home building, mining, and the introduction of nonnative animals and plants — like this acacia. Today the Sandhills, once contiguous, are cut into several fragments, owned and managed by different entities, including a state and a county park, and also separated by houses and a mining operation. Despite the fractured nature of the habitat, pieces of it still persist and, with a little help, just might survive a while longer. I stand there holding a spray bottle full of herbicide, while beyond the doomed acacia’s ring of shade, searing sunlight reflects off the hot white sand of Sandhills chaparral. I’m in the Olympia Watershed: 180 acres owned by the San Lorenzo Valley Water District (slvwd) northeast of Felton in the Zayante area (named after the sandy soil — the “Zayante series”— derived from the sandstone of the Santa Margarita formation). Opportunities are limited to visit this Sandhills portion of the watershed; a fence runs along the main road, blocking access. I’m here off-road only because my tree-killing companion, Ken Moore, has a grant from the slvwd to help restore the area. It’s October, and the Sandhills at this time of year aren’t as vibrant as they will be in the spring. The area is dotted with
home to the endemic, endangered Mount Cruz kangaroo rat (below). Both animals are especially adapted for burrowing in the sandy soils here.
have made studying and preserving the Sandhills a lifelong passion. The place seems to pull people in, even though it’s open to visitors only in spring and only on guided walks. But on those walks, you’re bound to hear about ornithologists and naturalists and botanists who’ve made the Sandhills their specialty. Ecologist Jodi McGraw says she did her dissertation on the Sandhills partly because she was intrigued by the area’s rarity and fragility, and also, as she puts it, “because the Sandhills are an ideal system to study how exotic plants alter the way natural disturbances, such as fire, affect endangered plants, such as the wallflower and spineflower.” A few years back, McGraw wrapped up the Sandhills Conservation © Suzanne Schettler, greeningassociates.com
tr ail Jodi M. McGraw, jodimcgrawconsulting.com
the dull sage green of the endemic Bonny Doon (or silverleaf) manzanita (Arctostaphylos silvicola), which won’t bear its small red fruits until later in the season. But in the springtime, the Sandhills bloom with the yellows, pinks, and purples of wildflowers, and visitors can join guided educational hikes along trails in nearby Quail Hollow Ranch County Park and, less frequently, here in the Olympia Watershed. To Moore, who’s cleared about 35 acres of acacia over four years, each wildflower is a triumph — proof that despite steep odds, the Sandhills’ four endemic plants still survive: the Santa Cruz wallflower (Erysimum teretifolium), Ben Lomond spineflower (Chorizanthe pungens var. hartwegiana), Ben Lomond buckwheat (Eriogonum nudum var. decurrens), and Bonny Doon manzanita. A former landscape architect, Moore’s done his share of planting nonnative ornamentals. “I’m spending the rest of my life atoning for my sins,” he says. Moore runs the Wildlands Restoration Team, a nonprofit that works to preserve natural habitat in the Santa Cruz Mountains, including the Sandhills. Moore belongs to a diverse group of people who, enamored with this unique habitat and troubled by its destruction,
th e
Hermon June beetle (left) and the Santa
Planning Project, an endeavor that mapped the Sandhills and identified key areas for conservation. These days, among many other things, she works to preserve the Sandhills through research, habitat management, and educational programs. You begin to see things differently when you’re with Sandhills aficionados like McGraw and Moore, who have a reverence for the place and an uncanny ability to help you see it as they do. So, back at the Olympia Watershed, when Moore suggests we take a break from killing acacias (which involves squirting herbicide into holes drilled in their trunks) and go on a walk, I jump at the chance. The wind stirs up swirls of sand along the trail, and the white sand blazes under the pounding sun. If not for the redwood-covered hills in the distance, we could be in the desert. Moore points out the two main Sandhills communities: northern maritime chaparral with Bonny Doon manzanita (known informally as Sandhills chaparral) and maritime Coast Range ponderosa pine forest (Sandhills parkland). Sandhills chaparral is the dominant habitat, covering about 3,750 of the 4,000 acres; it tends to grow in flatter areas and on the slopes of ridges. Chaparral is home to the endemic, endangered Mount Hermon June beetle (Polyphylla barbata) and the Santa Cruz kangaroo rat (Dipodomys venustus venustus) and strewn with shrubs like the Bonny Doon manzanita
on
The distinctive chaparral of the Sandhills is
Jodi M. McGraw, jodimcgrawconsulting.com
Jodi M. McGraw, jodimcgrawconsulting.com
(left) Pussypaws (Calyptridium monospermum) is normally found in the Sierra Nevada but also occurs in the Sandhills. (above) Ben Lomond wallflower (Erysimum teretifolium) is federally endangered. (right) Santa Cruz monkeyflower (Mimulus rattanii ssp. decurtatus) rarely grows more than four inches tall and occurs only in sandy soils in Santa Cruz County. © Suzanne Schettler, greeningassociates.com
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The
Forager’s
What’s Right, and Wrong, with Gathering
Charles Kennard
Wild Foods?
(clockwise from left) This mushroom, Amanita lanei, is edible but also illustrative of one of the challenges of foraging: Its close relatives are fatally poisonous. Acorn cakes and chanterelles make for less risky foraged food. For the group ForageSF, collecting wild food has gone from hobby to business, with guests paying $100 or more each for special meals. Designer Sasha Duerr John W. Wall, jwallphoto.blogspot.com
focuses on gathering plants that can be used to make dyes for textiles.
Dilemma Eu e l l G i bb o n s called it “stalking” in his 1962 best
Damon Tighe
grown rapidly. Foraged mushrooms are available year-round at specialty shops such as Far West Fungi in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Cutting-edge chefs seek out rare foraged foods. Fashionable restaurants such as Berkeley’s Chez Panisse retain professional foragers to find nettles, mushrooms, chicory, and other plants. Foraging is fun and free, and foraged foods are fresh, tasty, and nutritious. They’re the antithesis of the American industrial food system’s processed “food-like substances.” So foraging is great for foragers and diners. But how many foragers can one patch of land sustain? And how do plants, fungi, and animals fare? What, in short, are the ethics of foraging? I’ve noticed that it’s rare for foragers to talk openly and directly about ethics, especially when they’re gathering wild mushrooms that fetch as much as $60 a pound. I don’t mean to say that all foragers are greedy and commercial. They aren’t. The motives — and rewards — for most foragers are far more than monetary. One East Bay forager who asked to be identified only as Katherine explains, “Mushroom hunting really connects you to the land like nothing else. You use a different set of eyes, and it makes me feel incredibly high.” For her and others, it’s a kind of spiritual quest. “Foraging for ingredients is far more interesting than shopping in supermar-
Damon Tighe
seller, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, which launched the contemporary foraging movement and made him one of my outdoor role models. Like Gibbons, I’ve foraged on the East Coast, mostly for shellfish in Long Island Sound, and on the West Coast, for blackberries, quail eggs, fennel, and much more. But I’ve always thought of myself as a common scavenger rather than as a “forager,” a word redolent of European forests and feudal lords. Whether one calls it foraging, scavenging, gathering, or stalking, it’s now at a cultural and environmental crossroads. Foraging information has spread through websites, newspapers, magazines, books, and word of mouth. Every year, it seems, more naturalists, foodies, and commercial foragers tromp into woods, fields, and pastures. How many is impossible to say: No one keeps statistics on them, or on the supply of the wild foods they’re seeking. Unlike hunting and fishing, both tightly regulated, foraging — defined roughly as gathering (rather than catching or shooting) wild foods — remains an under-the-radar pursuit. Still, anecdotal evidence from Bay Area foragers suggests the demand for edible wildflowers, roots, mushrooms, and fruits has
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the
Parks and the
People Keeping California’s State Parks Alive in Hard Times by Joan Hamilton Joseph Engbeck is the author of a celebratory history of California’s state parks. His book starts with 1864 and ends in the 1970s, when the system had grown to 250 parks and was in its heyday. He has intriguing tales to tell about most any era— but falls silent when asked about the one we’re living through now. “I wouldn’t like to write that chapter,” he says.
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(large photo) Mono Lake. (Inset, left to right) Olompali State Historic Park; Robert Hanna opposing closure of Benicia Capitol SHP; wheelchair hiker on Mount Diablo; kayakers at Tomales Bay State Park.
Anderson Marsh
Bothe-Napa Annadel
Austin Creek
Hendy Woods
Russian Gulch
Jug Handle
ColusaSacramento River
Portola Redwoods
Diggins
Plumas-Eureka
Turlock Lake
Railtown 1897
South Yuba River
Bidwell Mansion
Woodson Bridge
William B. Ide Adobe
Shasta SHP
Weaverville Joss House
Castle Crags
Bale Grist Mill Leland Stanford Mansion Sugarloaf Ridge Jack London Governor's Petaluma Adobe Tomales Bay Mansion Olompali Samuel P. Taylor Benicia China Camp Brannan Island Benicia Capitol Candlestick Point Gray Whale Cove
Manchester
Greenwood
Point Cabrillo Light Station
WestportUnion Landing
Standish-Hickey
Benbow Lake
Grizzly Creek Redwoods
Fort Humboldt
Del Norte Coast Redwoods
Mono Lake Tufa
Samuel P. Taylor State Park (p. 28)
Hendy Woods State Park (p. 36)
march 2012
State of the State Parks
Open, Closed, or In Between?
Julie Kitzenber
Eliya Selhub, closingcaliforniaparks.com
Ed Callaert, edcallaert.com
Urban area
Major roadways
50 miles
N
Cartography by Louis Jaffé and John Kelly, GreenInfo Network. Copyright Bay Nature and GreenInfo Network.
* Parks marked with a red circle remain on the closure list; many have civic organizations or public agencies working on proposals to assume operations. * Parks marked with an orange star have proposed operating agreements with nonprofit organizations under review by the State Department of Parks & Recreation. * Parks marked with a blue star have an approved operating agreement with a nonprofit organization or public agency, or have raised dedicated funds to continue operations.
Classifications subject to change. Source: State Department of Parks & Recreation (3/6/12)
Removed from closure list
Closure list/action pending
Featured park
On closure list
Open
San Pasqual
Palomar Mountain
Saddleback Butte Antelope Valley Indian Museum
Pío Pico
Los Encinos
Santa Susana Pass
Fort Tejon
Tule Elk
California State Mining& Mineral Museum
McGrath
McConnell
Salton Sea
McGrath State Beach (p. 34)
Picacho
Providence Mountains
Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve (p. 30)
rger
Morro Strand
Limekiln
Garrapata
George J. Castle Rock Santa Cruz Mission Henry W. Coe Twin Lakes Zmudowski Moss Landing
Rick Lewis
habitats of
the East Bay Regiona l Parks This story is part of a series exploring significant natural habitats and resources of the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD), many of which are encountered in other parts of the Bay Area as well. The series is sponsored by EBRPD, which manages 65 parks, reserves, and trails covering more than 100,000 acres in Alameda and Contra Costa counties (ebparks.org).
R
eclaiming the Richmond Shoreline
The Rebirth of Breuner Marsh Travel along Richmond Parkway and you’ll witness a parade of progress and decay, nature and commerce. Evidence of industry past and present shares fence lines with blighted lots, tract housing, new developments — and plenty of open space. To the west are marshland, shoreline, and San Francisco Bay. To the east is urban North Richmond. Here in the space in between, residents of a working-class subdivision called Parchester Village fought for decades to keep a neighboring marsh undeveloped. They succeeded, and now tiny Breuner Marsh has evolved into one of the East Bay’s highestprofile shoreline restoration projects. It’s also shaping up to be one of the region’s pioneering efforts in sea level-rise planning, featuring a tidal marsh projected to withstand a waterline five feet higher than today’s. The half-century battle for Breuner Marsh enters its final stage next year. In late summer or early fall 2013, the East Bay Regional Park Dis(above) The view west from Breuner Marsh at sunset. Mount Tamalpais is in the distance. (left) This survey map from 1915 shows the onceextensive marshes of Richmond. Though Breuner Marsh was dwarfed by the former marshes to the south, it may become increasingly important habitat as sea level rise inundates other nearby marshes. U.S. Geological Survey
by Nate Seltenrich
Kathy Barnhart
trict, which closed escrow on the land in 2011, begins the twoyear process of restoring public use and near-optimal ecological function. After withstanding proposals to turn it into a small airport, a business park, a transit village, and multiple housing developments over the course of 40 years, the marsh will be not only protected but also rehabilitated. Today the site waits in a sort of suspended animation. The tides still come in and out, the shorebirds still feast along the mudflats, and the native grasses still fight for space among invasive weeds. But soon this quiet backwater will be reconfigured to fulfill its potential as a recreational destination and a home for native wildlife. “That area of the north Richmond shoreline is particularly valuable habitat,” says Nancy Wenninger, who, as assistant general manager of the park district’s land division, helped shepherd the acquisition. “It’s an important wildlife corridor. The upland area, the marsh area, and even the submerged area are all part of a very important mosaic of habitat. It’s a beautiful jewel on the Richmond shoreline.” Indeed, the park district saw so much value here that it resorted to acquiring the land through eminent domain, an often contentious tactic it prefers to avoid. But if you really want to learn how big a deal the project is, the person to ask is park district board member Whitney Dotson, elected to his post in 2008 in part due to his efforts to protect the 218-acre parcel as open space.
“It’s a slow process to make these things happen, but I’m very much satisfied,” he says. “The big step is that the Breuner Marsh area is now saved. It’s just rewarding to see the public winning this battle.” Dotson was only five years old when he moved with his family to Parchester Village in 1950. His father, the Reverend Richard Daniel Dotson, had joined about 20 other black ministers to work with sympathetic landowner Fred Parr on a masterplanned community for African Americans. Many of the new residents, including Dotson’s own family, had moved to Richmond from rural Louisiana. There they had been accustomed to wide open spaces, a luxury not afforded in industrialized Richmond. The ministers agreed to recruit parishioners to buy homes in Parchester on one condition: The existing coastal areas to the north, south, and, perhaps most importantly, west — where the marsh is located — would remain undeveloped. “That fit right into the buffer zone that they were used to in rural Louisiana,” Dotson says. Parchester Village would be their sanctuary. But by the early 1970s, development was exerting unrelenting pressure on the adjacent open space, which until then had been used primarily for cattle and sheep grazing. Despite his promise, Parr sold the marshland to Gerald Breuner (whose family owned the erstwhile Breuners furniture store chain). An aviation enthusiast, Breuner continued filling the site in hopes of building a april–june 2012
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exploring nature with kids
There’s a Dinosaur in Your Yard! Scott D. Sampson
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
“Can we go see the barn owls one more time? Please?” That from those red-tailed hawk chicks back was my daughter Jade a few Satmore than 150 million years to dinosaurs urdays ago. “OK, OK,” I replied, that lived in the Jurassic. swept up by her enthusiasm. Birds inherited a lot from their ancesWe found the owls nestled in tors. Hollow bones also lightened the the rafters of our local barn skeletons of their theropod predecessors. just as we’d left them an hour Feathers, long thought exclusive to birds, before—the buff-colored female evolved first in ground-dwelling hunters wedged up against her snowyakin to Velociraptor. Dinosaurs likely white partner. Only the male used those long-ago feathers to show off cracked open his eyes as we (think peacocks) and to hold on to body snuck back in for another peek. heat (think penguins); only much later Their striking, heart-shaped were they used for flight. And the parental faces appeared almost othercare of those red-tailed hawks (and most worldly. birds) is also an inheritance from dinoLast May, in celebration of saurs. International Migratory Bird In a very real sense, those raucous Day, Jade and I had gone on a blackbirds are backyard guided bird walk at Muir Beach. dinosaurs, offering a As we gathered in the parking vibrant window into lot, one of the leaders pointed at the distant his powerful birding scope and past. said, “Check out the Pacific loons. We’ve seen hundreds (above) It’s easy to imagine this great egret cruise by heading north to their Arctic having dinosaur ancestors, perhaps a bit like this breeding grounds.” It took Jade a minute artist’s rendering (right) of a feathered dinosaur found in to get the hang of the eyepiece, but then China. (below right) The author and his daughter birding in West Marin. her eyes widened with amazement as the black-throated fish-eaters zoomed past. two gangly white red-tailed hawk chicks “Turkey vultures,” someone yelled. in a meter-wide nest atop a Monterey We added ravens, Bonaparte’s gulls, and cypress. Their parent maintained a steadan Anna’s hummingbird to our list before fast watch nearby. we set off for the marsh, where we were The amazing truth of the matter is that greeted by a regiment of red-winged blackevery single one of these winged wonders birds perched on cattails, scarlet epaulets In China, over the past 15 years flashing and metallic voices ringing out. A is a dinosaur, members of a family known scientists have unearthed fossils snowy egret merely flying by was immedi- as theropods that also includes Tyrannoof more than a dozen species of saurus rex. Unbroken lines can be traced ately attacked by three dive-bombing feathered (non-bird) dinosaurs, blackbirds. Welcome to nesting season. Back on the ground, the GET OUT! Join Scott Sampson and Bay Nature for a kid-friendly birding trip to Muir kids were captivated by two malBeach on May 5 (details at baynature.org/inthefield). Kids and grown-ups can “hunt” for modern lard families, and they laughed dinosaur descendants on bird walks and events throughout our area on International Migratory with glee as the fluffy yellow chicks Bird Day, May 12 this year (birdday.org). San Francisco Nature Education offers kid-friendly bird waddled to keep pace with their parwalks in Golden Gate Park year-round (sfnature.org/programs/calendar.html). ents. We climbed a nearby hill to see
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Michael W. Skrepnick 1999
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Families Afield
many of them so similar to birds that it’s difficult to tell one from the other. So you could say that we still live in the Age of Dinosaurs! With over 10,000 living species, they far outnumber mammals’ measly 6,000 varieties. (To be fair, the past four billion years might be best called the “Age of Bacteria,” but we big creatures tend to overlook anything microscopic.) We all know kids love dinosaurs. So they must all be out birding, right? No, but they should be. A set of binoculars and a field guide are all you need to get started, and bird feeders offer an excellent way to attract dinosaurs into your own backyard. Northern California is arguably the best place on the continent for birdwatching; each year, nearly 500 different bird species pass through Point Reyes National Seashore alone, more than are found in each of 40 whole states. What better carrot to entice youngsters outside than the chance to see living, breathing dinosaurs? Watching that robin hunt for worms is not as far removed as you might think from T. rex stalking Triceratops. If your kids aren’t so interested in learning birds’ names, try having them mimic birdcalls and flight movements or make sketches in a nature journal. Jade and I have decided to become serious dinosaur hunters, so now our hikes have become “treasure hunts” as we look
m i c h a e l
Scott D. Sampson
Ask the Naturalist
to add more winged neighbors to our respective counts. Just yesterday Jade asked, for the umpteenth time, “Daddy, when can we go back to see the barn owls?”
Q: Why do pelicans fly so low over the water? I’ve seen it many times, but only recently considered that it must take work to fly so low without falling in. [Tamara, Oakland] A: It turns out that Paul Ehrlich answered this very question in a 1988 guide to the birds of Stanford University, of all places: “Skimming permits the birds to take advantage of an aerodynamic phenomenon known as ‘ground effect.’” When a bird, or an airplane, flies less than a wingpsan’s distance from the ground, flight is much more efficient due to slight changes in airflow patterns around the wing. Land is usually too cluttered with grass and trees and whatnot to permit such flight, but calm Bay waters are perfect for it. That’s not the only way pelicans use slight changes in air currents and pressure to conserve energy. Pelicans (both brown and American white) are among the champion soaring birds we observe near shore in the Bay Area. Like many other birds, pelicans often fly in V-formation. During flight, an updraft is created by the upstroke of one bird’s wing, and the following bird can take advantage of this wingtip vortex to save a significant amount of energy. White pelicans, like turkey vultures, rise up on thermals (pillows of hot air), wheeling around in great circles — up, up, up. Then they drop, floating downward — losing altitude while gaining distance. I once watched a group of 36 white pelicans for over an hour. Without flapping once, they traveled more than 15 miles. Pelicans also take advantage of strong winds and wave action by a flight strategy called dynamic soaring. Actually, the true masters of this are albatrosses, which can fly for days without flapping. We have two species offshore — the black-footed and Laysan albatross, which nest thousands of miles from here. In light winds, albatrosses take advantage of the slight air pressure differences created by rising and falling waves. They rise against the air backed up
e l l i s by the wave crest and then drop down again. Albatrosses can even fly against the wind using little or no energy. They repeatedly cross the boundary between areas of different wind speed (lower just above the water, faster ten feet up). They fly against the wind to gain altitude (rising into the gust), then zigzag down (falling into the lee) to gain speed. The external nostrils, called nares, found in this group of seabirds (including petrels and shearwaters) are suspected to aid in detecting airspeed in the same way that airplanes use a device called a pitot tube (the little L-shaped thing that sticks out the side of a plane). So next time you’re watching pelicans or, if you’re lucky, albatrosses flying low or soaring overhead, tip your hat to two champions of energy conservation. Send your questions to atn@baynature.org.
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