Park News 9/21/2024
Reminder: Equinox Gathering Sunday Eve
The Autumn Equinox happens this Sunday the 22nd, and there’ll be a gathering at the Chavez/Huerta Tribute Site and Solar Calendar at 6:15 to 7:15 pm, with the sunset scheduled at 7:05 pm.
Rabbi David Cooper will lead the event, and possibly blow the shofar, as he did at this event two years ago.
For background and directions to the site, check out solarcalendar.org
Owls Get Big Support on Nextdoor
Support for Burrowing Owls in our park is strong among members of nextdoor.com, the neighborhood social network. A post blasting the city’s decision to block a protective fence for the owls got an amazing 12,600 views, 139 hearts and 120 supportive comments in the first 48 hours.
Thanks largely to the response on nextdoor.com, the online petition in support of the owls jumped from 123 to 454 signatures in three days.
A number of commenters on nextdoor said that they had written their city councilmembers and/or the mayor about the issue. So far, not one elected official has responded. Several writers have forwarded the item to Berkeleyside, which to date maintains silence. The electeds and the online periodical appear out of touch with popular feeling about these charismatic birds.
The Chavez Park Conservancy is now consulting with Greenfire Law Firm of Berkeley about legal options to compel the city to protect the Burrowing Owls. The owls are currently classified as a “species of special concern” and a petition to upgrade their protection to “endangered” has been filed with the State Fish & Game Commission.
Meanwhile, Conservancy CEO Martin Nicolaus (this writer) has published a study of the Burrowing Owls in Cesar Chavez Park on a preprint server for scholarly articles. The study tracks their arrival and departure dates, the length of their stays, their habitat preferences for settlement spots, their behavior in rain, their response to humans, and their issues with avian and mammalian predators. The article is under submission to peer-reviewed academic journals.
Last week, park landscape maintenance workers mowed and cleared most of the vegetation in the seasonal Burrowing Owl Sanctuary in the northeast corner of the park. This removed some of the taller plants that Burrowing Owls rely on for shelter from raptors. Fortunately, this year parks staff saved the tall Fennel plants growing outside the paved trail near the water’s edge in the area. The Fennel creates an umbrella that can hide the owls and their friends, the Ground Squirrels, from big hawks flying overhead that might be tempted to attack them.
Dredging for the Big Boats
Park visitors last week could hear and see a big dredging crane and barge operating in the harbor mouth just south of the park. The operation aims to deepen the north, central, and south entries to the marina. The north and central entries are used by small to middling craft. The south channel is deeper and has been used by the larger vessels, including the biggest sailing yachts. However, according to city staff, the south channel is “becoming a navigational challenge during low tides for larger boats.” No testimony by owners of the larger boats as to their inconvenience on this account is cited.
Paul Kamen, a naval architect, long-time avid boater, and past chair of the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, expressed concern in May that this dredging project “may be less than fully effective and possibly counter-productive.” In a letter to city staff, Kamen indicated that the south channel had maintained its depth and remained fully navigable at low tide because the outgoing tide scoured accumulated silt away. He feared that dredging the middle and north channels would hamper this scouring action and cause the south channel to fill in. He called dredging the north channel “a pure waste of money” as deep-draft vessels never use it.
The city put the dredging job out for bid in March. Only one bidder, the Dutra Co., responded. Dutra got the contract at a cost of $4.8 million. All but $380k of that comes from a State Coastal Conservancy Grant.
Birds Seen This Week
The Black-necked Stilts were gone when I checked the area this Friday morning, but a colorful Long-billed Curlew took their place. Usually somewhat pale, this bird stood out for its saturated orange plumage. If you look closely, you’ll see where it catches a tiny wriggling thing and somehow moves it swiftly up the beak, as if it had a conveyer belt in there. After foraging for a while, this bird started preening. Not easy to do with such a long beak. True, it can reach distant feathers, but anything up close is very difficult. The bird did a lot of rubbing with the side of its head.
I counted about 75 Canada Geese on the North Basin water, along with perhaps a dozen American Wigeon and a pair of Mallards, all dabbling and/or preening and/or napping in the shallow water at a zero tide. The geese are probably migrants, coming to join the year-rounders that mostly hang out on the north side of University Avenue. The wigeons are regular fall visitors, as are the Mallards.
About three dozen Brown Pelicans assembled on the North Basin on Friday morning, many of them foraging with shallow dips, others preening or resting. The birds with white on the backs of their necks are adults not in breeding mode. The ones with grey on the back of the neck are juveniles. When it is breeding time, the adult necks will grow black and their pouches almost bright red. It’s not breeding season now. Here by chance my camera was following one small group of birds when one of them took off, followed quickly by a second, and in a few moments the whole flock were airborne and on their way to the coast, headed south. How one bird becomes the leader and why it decides to take off at a given time are among the many unanswered questions in my MATWOB file (Mysterious Are The Ways of Birds).
This beautiful big bird was foraging for breakfast close along the shore by Marina Boulevard. As I watched, it snatched up tiny wigglers, hardly an inch long.
The bird is capable of taking much bigger prey in surf and on turf. It’s been photographed taking sizeable fish and rodents. Not this morning. The bird is a pragmatist, making do with what’s available.
At one point, the bird passed a bunch of blooming Oregon Gumplant (Grindelia stricta) growing on the border. I couldn’t resist taking the picture, see the gallery below. It was a grey morning and I expected no visual poetry. Yet there it was.
Some Other Feathers of the Week
Summer Schedule
With so much new material this week, I’m holding off some topics announced earlier until the post after this one. That includes the new native pollinator planning, the landfill gas rework review, and updates on botanical developments in the park.
This blog is switching to Summer Schedule year round. That means posts will drop whenever there’s material and motivation, which may be more or less often than the usual regular Friday at 5 pm publication schedule.
