Park News 9/28/2024

To Max Newton go the honors of spotting the first Burrowing Owl of the season. At around 11 a.m. on Friday Sep 27, as he was walking on the paved trail inside the seasonal Burrowing Owl Sanctuary, he saw this bird perched on a rock on the east shore, near the northeast corner. As its alert stance suggests, the bird had not settled in. After a while, Max reports, the bird flew 20 or 30 feet to another rock in the area. After receiving Max’s report, I walked the area around 5 pm the same day and saw no traces of this bird. Very probably this was a stopover visit to another destination further south.

This is among the earliest owls spotted in the park. Its brief visit signals time for all owl watchers to keep eyes open, look deep into the whole northeast habitat, and always have a camera ready. No owls settled here last winter, but they could very well return this year. That’s what happened after the winter of 2017-2018, when no owls were seen here; the following winter, more owls visited than ever before. See the movie, The Owls Came Back (2019).

If you see a Burrowing Owl in the park, email info@chavezpark.org, or text 510-717-2414. Describe time and place in detail. Add a photo if possible. Watch this space for up-to-date reports.

Jeff Miller from the Center for Biological Diversity writes:

“The California Fish & Game Commission will hold a public hearing on October 10^th to determine whether listing western burrowing owl populations in California as threatened or endangered under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA) may be warranted. The Commission will likely vote on whether to designate “candidate” status for burrowing owls.

“Please attend the Thursday, October 10^th meeting in Sacramento in person, to speak in support of state listing. It is at 8:30 am, at the Natural Resources Headquarters Building, 715 P Street, Sacramento, in the Auditorium. The burrowing owl listing (item 14) will be the first substantive item. The meeting agenda is here. If you cannot attend in person, you can testify remotely (instructions to join online). Or just submit an email before October 4 to the Commission supporting CESA listing (fgc@fgc.ca.gov).”

Statement to the Commission Hearing by Martin Nicolaus, CEO of the Chavez Park Conservancy

Burrowing Owls have wintered for decades in Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley, where a large and growing number of park visitors are often able to see and admire them. It is heart-wrenching to see the owls’ numbers declining. On behalf of thousands of Bay Area citizens who follow the owls in person and online, I respectfully urge the Commission to grant formal recognition to their endangered status, so that all possible legal measures for their protection can be mobilized.

An Inadequate Explanation, by Carol Denney

 I’m a local musician who has walked in the park for decades and shares community concern over seeing fewer and fewer Burrowing Owls. Last year we had none that settled in.

 I recently found myself fixated on the idea of learning to crochet and making small representations of burrowing owls to add to the art fence as a kind of innocent tribute and perhaps, for some, an inspiration. They look silly. I’m sure there are yarn and fabric artists who could do much better. I can’t seem to stop.

 My thought was to inspire others to add their own creations to the fence in tribute to the owls to remind people of their efforts, this time of year, to find a safe place to winter. They’re looking at us, as we look at them. Mine have big eyes. The owls aren’t asking for much from us. I want people to think about them, that’s all. — Carol Denney

Paul Buddenhagen attended his first City Council meeting on Sep 24 in his new capacity as City Manager, replacing Dee Williams-Ridley. One of his first acts was to fire off a memo about Burrowing Owls in Cesar Chavez Park. A copy of the memo is available here for downloading. Buddenhagen is said to be a nice guy and has done some good things, but he didn’t spell-check or fact-check this memo or do basic homework on the Burrowing Owl issue.

It isn’t just that he writes of predators that “pray” on owls, or that he talks of the “Off-Lease” Area. Or that he thinks owls are “nesting” here, or that he gets the date of the temporary fence wrong (it was 2008, not 2009), or that he invents a “biologist” member of the committee that designed the art installation. He mistakenly thinks that the chain-link fence installed in 2020 separates the “OLA and the Burrowing Owl area.” He has obviously never set foot in this part of the park. He thinks that because there is signage, that all dog owners obey it, so there’s no problem. He relies on back-channel communications with unnamed Golden Gate Bird Alliance people for the belief that loose dogs are not a problem for owls, and that a taller fence would enable predators to perch, as if the owls were blind and could not spot them. As opposed to back-channel traffic, no recognized GGBA spokesperson has ever come out publicly and claimed that loose dogs are no problem for Burrowing Owls in the park. My open letter to the GGBA requesting a public statement on the issue has gone unanswered. The GGBA docent program died and the GGBA ceased to be active in the park after the winter of 2017-2018 when no owls were seen here. Since then, the source of daily reports, photos, videos, on-site viewings, talks, analyses and background about the owls in the park has been and continues to be the Chavez Park Conservancy and the chavezpark.org website. A petition with more than 900 signatures asks for a better fence. Buddenhagen has not done his homework.

As reported here previously, the city will close portions of the park in the morning hours starting Monday Sep 30 continuing through Oct 4. The purpose is to avoid disturbance of a drone flying a grid pattern over the park towing a Geiger counter about 10 feet above the surface.

While the height of the device won’t bump into people or dogs on the ground, some people carry radioactive materials like watch dials or medical devices that could set off false positives. There’ll be signs and live staff at the boundaries.

Closures are scheduled to start at dawn and end by 10 am. Details and a map are at the city’s website. For background on the radiation testing, see this post.

The Native Plant Pollinator Habitat in the park got a boost of TLC on Friday morning Sep 27 when a crew of volunteers organized by Chavez Park Conservancy Volunteer Coordinator Bob Huttar showed up for watering and weeding. We unrolled close to 500 feet of garden hose to water trees and shrubs throughout the Native Plant Area. Careful hand pulling of weeds growing close to tender natives encouraged the good guys’ growth and spread. A patch of native Elderberry plants on the edge of the west-side picnic area was burdened by invasive Kikuyu grass and a spreading thistle plant. No longer. In an overdue move, a small orchard of Fennel on the southwest slope fell to steel clippers and was hauled off. Fennel is valuable habitat in the northwest quadrant of the park, where there’s little else, but it’s pointless and out of place in the Native Plant Area. Volunteers at work included Helen Canin, Carlene Chang, Clyde Crosswhite, Carol Denney, Bob Huttar, Nancy Nash, Martin Nicolaus, and Lee Tempkin.

A gathering of almost 30 hardy souls braved the frigid breeze at sunset Sep 22 to celebrate the Fall Equinox. Rabbi David Cooper, a veteran of these events, gave a talk about the Copernican revolution and its sequelae. It wasn’t very long ago that authorities believed that the sun revolved around the earth. The scientists who saw and reported the opposite ran into stiff headwinds. Galileo Galilei, notably, formally recanted after the church threatened him with torture. It took more than a century before Nicolaus Copernicus’ heliocentric thesis gained wide scientific acceptance.

After his talk, as the glowing orb sank beneath the western hills, David blew the shofar. It was a smaller shofar than previously, perhaps an alto shofar, but a shofar nevertheless. Click here for background on the shofar.

The City is holding a public meeting on the parking issue for the proposed ferry project at 630 pm Monday Sep. 30. The consultants’ parking ideas are laid out in a pdf posted Sep 27 and available here. The Zoom link for the meeting is at this website. A memo and petition opposing the ferry are one click away here.

Park visitor Nathalie Schumann spotted this adult Black-crowned Night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) foraging off the rocks on the east side of the park on Sep 20.

Birds of this species are fairly frequent visitors to the park in daytime. Their common name suggests that they’re night feeders, and their vision is good enough to do that. But obviously they get hungry in daylight as well, and can be seen sometimes alongside other herons and egrets looking for small fresh seafood. Unlike the Snowy Egret, which forages very actively, the Night-heron tends toward the wait and strike method. It can perch for many minutes without betraying the slightest movement, so that little creatures below begin to accept it as part of the fixed environment and become careless. Then they pay for their mistake.

Park visitors have told me that these birds breed in an old cypress tree near the driveway on the south side of the Hilton Doubletree hotel. I have not been able to confirm that from my own observation. Their movements are very variable, with European and Atlantic populations capable of thousand-km migrations, while Pacific populations are often settled year round, with some minor migrations.

Thank you, Nathalie, for sharing your photos of this bird.

With so much new material this week, I’m again holding off some topics announced earlier. 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 former Friday at 5 pm publication schedule.

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