August Newsletter

Upcoming Bird Walks and The Verdin!

Hello AVAS Members and Friends,

Here are our upcoming bird walks for August!

Bird Walks

Bird Walk at the Prime Desert Woodland Preserve

Saturday, August 2nd, 7am-8:30am

Enjoy our monthly Bird Walk at the Prime Desert Woodland Preserve! No need to sign up, it’s open to any and all bird lovers!

*Spare binoculars available, and bring your cameras if you’d like.

Bird Walk at the Ventura Settling Ponds

Saturday, August 16th, 8am

SIGN UP HERE

Join us for a coastal bird walk at the Ventura Settling Ponds! If you’d like to carpool, please meet at Apollo Park at 6am. Otherwise, we’ll be meeting at the Settling Ponds at 8am. Don’t forget your binoculars!

The Verdin

By Julian Krzysiak, Conservation Committee Chair

Hello birders, birdwatchers, and bird enjoyers! Birds fly, but time flies faster. Has it really been a month since I had written this newsletter last? A momentary doubt stretches out my time in consternation. Look at the calendar. It really is the end of the month. No matter. Let’s reweave the threads together. Relive the moments and replaster the color. It’s coming back. I see it now.

Recap

As so often demarcates the beginning of the month, our bird walk at the Prime Desert Woodland Preserve brought together faces new and old to share again in the simple joy of looking. Acknowledging. Learning. Learning to see what they are looking at, not just looking at what they see. Knowledge upwells and flows amongst and throughout. Aren’t we just looking at birds? You can learn a lot from them. And we saw a Roadrunner, Greater indeed! Their size amazes me compared to the dainty quail skidaddling about, almost falling over onto their faces rushing to their next appointment.

Our next event involved birding at Tehachapi Mountain Park. This was my first time going there, and the landscape itself was enough to impress. Valley Oaks, Blue Oaks, Ponderosa Pines, Jeffrey Pines, White Firs, hugging each other up the slopes, it’s no wonder there are so many birds to see. And they were all brought together in a watering hole fed by a spring, conveniently located right next to the front parking lot. We stood in place, binoculars buzzing about and cameras clicking throughout as we stood there trying to count everything we saw. I was particularly captivated by the Lawrence's Goldfinches: the lines of lemon contrast so nicely with their charcoal smudges underlain by ash.

After a good 20 minutes, we shuttled in a few cars to drive through the forests to the top of the campgrounds. It’s quite a nice site. I may have to ramble on over myself to get above the desert heat. Up through a side trail, we were blessed with bluebirds, nuthatches, and a brown creeper flew right in front of us. I don’t think we would have been able to discern their camouflaged backs otherwise. More birds here, more birds there, and at the very end we returned to the springs. I believe it was Will who spotted a Red Crossbill that glued our gazes upon it for a good ten minutes, how could we not? A wonderful denouement to a birding day.

Finally, we had our Birds and Beer last Saturday. We played a matching game and pictionary with an extremely knowledgeable budding birder, Vesper, who astounded us with her avian passion; I’m pretty sure she knew more than me! Laughs were merry, drinks were drunk, and the camaraderie spilled forth into our brewery corner. If you require a recommendation, I can wholeheartedly vouch for The Shroud, a Russian Imperial Stout, especially a version I can’t quite remember now (was it the beer?), aged with strong notes of peanut butter topped off with a smooth finish.

Conservation

Project Phoenix is still ongoing, a great opportunity to contribute to bird community science. But you don’t need a program or event to do that. It can be done every day whenever you feel like it!

If you haven’t used eBird yet, it’s an intuitive app that allows birders everywhere to record what birds they have seen. These observations can then be used by your fellow birders and researchers to determine where birds are and from that data postulate why.

https://support.ebird.org/en/support/solutions/articles/48001158707-get-started-with-ebird

There is even an included self-paced course! You can even connect your eBird account to Merlin, which I’m sure many of the birdly curious have already.

Extra Events

Perusing LA County Library events, I stumbled upon a virtual presentation about the science, history, and our cultural connections with birds by the author himself. Sounds like a fun free event to attend if you can make it, occurring on Tuesday, August 5, from 11am to noon.

https://lacountylibrary.libnet.info/event/14119587

Shoutouts

I recently attended a Books and Hikes event at the Placerita Canyon Nature Center that featured The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. It was a very fun time and it was great talking with others about a book, oh how I’ve yearned for it! They meet every last Sunday of the month if you are interested to join!

Anyways, the subject of this section is a bird photographer named Lou Cifelli. I was wandering around the nature center after the event and coming up the path he pointed out to me a beautiful red-shouldered hawk perched above. As fellow birders do, we started gabbing about birds and what a blessing this canyon is for them. He told me he was walking around trying to find a certain someone to give away two prints of his bird photos, with molding and archival tape included. Well, he couldn’t find them, but since I seemed pretty passionate about birds, I could have them! So I gratefully accepted, profusely thanked him, and smiled all the way back to my car, a lovely way to top off the day!

And they really are beautiful prints, like wow! Amazing photography! So I thought the least I could do is to share his account. Perhaps give him a follow and some likes, thanks!

https://www.instagram.com/lmc066/

Post Scriptum

Some or none of you may be wondering what happened to the family of Mourning Doves that built a nest right outside my window. Unfortunately, Walnut and Pecan, the little babies, disappeared after three days. This isn’t surprising, since around 50 – 70% of songbirds die within their first year. Was it overheating, a raven, a cat? I’ll never know, I even looked over the neighbor’s fence to check if the hatchlings had fallen. Gone.

Well, I was sad, a tinge still stays, and I wrote this poem to capture some of that and turn it into something. I don’t know if beautiful is the right word, but at least meaningful, which is what all art is and builds on. Enjoy.

A Mourning Dove Elegy

Imagine my delight
When mournings doves alight on my brick wall
Not resting but moving, twigs to and fro
To tangled fig vines a nest piece by piece being built inside.

Imagine my smile 
When Sticky for a while would march along single file 
On my brick wall, swaggering along stick in beak 
For Pebble to weave along in song their new home. 

Imagine the bliss
When I blew my neighbors a kiss and they looked back at me
Did they acknowledge my presence?
Their existence was enough for me.

Imagine the rapture 
When I captured the parents feeding their hatched 
The ugliest things you have ever seen 
And the most precious beings to me. 

After three days they died.
Snatched in the night, out of sight next morning.
A lone mourning dove stared at the empty nest from the roof above.
Imagine my sorrow. 

We even gave them names. 
Walnut and Pecan.
The smallest of lives gone.
But their memories live on.

As I lay dying, and I look up at the ceiling
What will I think of, what will I be seeing?
Ruined chances, lovely dances
Sunrises and sunsets
The best memories I will never get. 

Maybe going down the list of lives lost
I'll chance upon those littlest ones
Those two little mourning doves
Walnut and Pecan. 

A snap of existence, and that's that
My memory of them was the single thread
That kept them alive after death.

Might as well keep the chorus playing on
With our individual rhythms 
And other forgotten songs.