LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – It’s possible that global warming could become the swan song for some bird species in Lake County and elsewhere.
“There is evidence,” acknowledged Roberta Lyons, co-chair of the Redbud Audubon Society in Lake County, “that climate change is going to dramatically affect the number of birds.”
The immediate concern is the Western and Clark’s Grebe, which comes here in sufficient numbers to wrest the unofficial title of “bird of Clear Lake” from its present holder of that title – the blue heron.
Of the 133 species of birds counted by Redbud Audubon’s birders during the annual Christmas Bird Count on Dec. 27, the Western Grebe won the prize for the most individuals tallied with a high of 8,585.
The local Audubon chapter reported that highlights of the December count included a greater roadrunner, a member of the cuckoo family that was seen for the second year in a row, as well as a black-throated gray warbler that is considered extremely rare in Lake County in the winter but fairly common the rest of the year.
The sighting considered by the group to be the most unusual was a potential Iceland Gull, which has been seen only once before in Lake County.
Several species hit record high counts, including the acorn woodpecker, the red-breasted sapsucker and the phainopepla, black phoebes and the northern mockingbird.
At the same time, species shown to be down in the count included the European Starling, a nonnative species, and Brewer’s Blackbirds, with the group reporting that the “big misses” were the Northern Pintail and Redhead ducks, Cooper’s Hawk, Prairie Falcon, Wilson’s Snipe and Barn Owl.
Swans, it may be noted, are not abundant on Clear Lake.
Lyons said that annual bird counts of all the birds in Lake County annually undertaken at Christmas was “a little was a little bit lower this year” – the five-year average is 137.8 birds, with the all-time low count of 122 seen in 2003 – but not enough to be a cause for concern.
“It is not a definitive way to judge,” she said. “It depends on a lot of things because you may go out on a day when the weather’s not so good.”
Another factor could well be the switch in agriculture in the county to winegrapes. “It affects their habitat,” Lyons said of the county's bird species.
And yet another may be construction in the area. “Development is going to happen,” she said. “It just has to be mitigated.”
But she added that Redbud Audubon “has its say” about most construction.
One impact that probably doesn’t get much consideration is the invasion of new and invasive bird species.
Studies have established that bird species that can move easily to new habitat will likely continue to do well.
But bird species that thrive only in a narrow environmental range are expected to decline, and to be outnumbered by invasive species.
During the past five summers, from 2010 to 2014, Redbud Audubon has joined two other chapters of California Audubon in a cooperative project promoting the conservation of Western Grebes and Clark’s Grebes on several lakes in northern California.
The studies are financed by oil spill mitigation funds administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Fish and Wildlife Federation.
An Audubon grant supports a project to educate the public about the Western and Clark’s grebe that thrive in this region.
The project has focused on monitoring the breeding success of grebes, documenting nesting disturbances such as power boats deploying warning signs and buoys around the perimeter of nesting colonies, and building public awareness of various threats to the grebes’ reproductive success and how those threats may be reduced.
Marilyn Waits, a former Redbud Audubon president, has partnered with Dr. Floyd Hayes, professor of biology at Pacific Union College, in administering the grant.
A constant threat for grebes is the snarled fishing line that gets tossed into the lake where it frequently gets tangled around them.
“It’s always a concern,” said Lyons. “We just acknowledge that it’s going to be a problem. I’ve never seen a grebe wrapped up in fishing line, but I’ve seen pictures of them.”
Redbud Audubon, she added, works with environmentalist-conservationist Rob Patton in putting lakeside boxes in strategic places for the disposal of fishing line and maintaining them.
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