West Marin’s bird enthusiasts are promising a fruitful season of fall bird watching. The Palomarin Field Station, the longest-running birding station west of the Mississippi, reopened its doors this summer and is inviting people to come visit just in time for the 45th annual Rich Stallcup Bird-a-Thon.
The field station closed to the public in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. As researchers continued to band birds and collect data, Point Blue Conservation Science has been tiptoeing toward a visitor renaissance for a year now. School groups have been coming to visit and, in July, the station had a soft opening. Diana Humple, a principal ecologist for the station, said things are on their way back to normal with up to a dozen people visiting each weekend.
The field station, buried in the woods near the Palomarin Trailhead in Bolinas, is a research facility, education center and museum for Point Blue. The office has undergone changes in the past year with new exhibits educating visitors about Point Blue’s history and West Marin’s unique geography. The station’s seclusion and vintage flair add to the experience. Researchers take notes and measurements with tools and pencils beside the birds they catch.
The banders start their hands-on work shortly before 7 a.m. Among them is Mark Dettling, a Lagunitas resident and experienced avian ecologist. He embarks on a quarter-mile trail that encircles the property, a journey aimed at inspecting the 20 misting nets thoughtfully positioned throughout the area.
“If a bird is flying toward a juicy bug, it’ll go into the net and fall into one of the pockets,” said Mike Mahoney, another avian ecologist.
The nets, a 17th-century Japanese tradition introduced to North America after World War II, possess a remarkable quality: they are colossal in size, yet, like mist, their presence is inconspicuous and barely detectable to the touch. They are designed to be safe for capturing birds, and injuries rarely occur, Mr. Mahoney said. The station has an open invitation to visitors who can participate in guided net walks.
Once the birds are safely captured, the ecologists bring them to the office for notation and banding.
Using a thick, timeworn copy of “Identification Guide to North American Birds” by Peter Pyle, the station’s ecologists determine the species from among the 150-plus that have been captured at the station. In August alone, 30 species were observed.
Then the bird is banded. Gently handling a small brown bird, banding apprentice Andrea Robles begins to rattle off its features to Mr. Dettling. The bird’s translucent skin allows her to study its skull growth. The juvenile female purple finch hatched earlier this year, she said. Using a series of specially crafted pliers, she wraps a band around its leg before releasing it.
A Santa Rosa native, Ms. Robles studied at the University of California, San Diego, where she earned a degree in environmental science. She’s been working at the field station since March and helps Point Blue ecologists study and notate birds. Mr. Mahoney said the organization prioritizes training aspiring scientists who are looking to break into avian ecology, which is notoriously difficult to do.
“Just in the last year I got into the bird world,” Ms. Robles said. “It’s so cool. Like, it’s not just for old people.”
Point Blue hires roughly four apprentices for the spring and summer and four for the fall and winter. They assist with banding, notation and research while rotating to the different field stations in the area. Palomarin is the primary site but Point Blue monitors four others in West Marin: by Muir Beach, on the Bolinas Lagoon, at the Muddy Hollow Trailhead and uphill from the Palomarin station.
Point Blue, formerly known as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, relocated from a barn on Drakes Estero to the Palomarin station in 1966. Before Palomarin was a research center for birds, it was a schoolhouse for a growing religious community called Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule.
In 1950, the group bought the 3,100 acres, once part of the Shafter empire’s 75,000-acre holdings from Bolinas to Point Reyes. Despite efforts by the Shafter brothers to develop it into a dairy ranch, its poor-quality, brushy land led to tenant frustration, and it was abandoned by 1935.
The church developed the site with homes, barns, businesses and two schoolhouses. Looking to grow, but thwarted by the expansion of the Point Reyes National Seashore, the church sold the property to the park service in 1963 for around $2 million. The church moved north, and operates today in Willits.
With the changing uses, the land’s ecology and visiting avian species have also changed, Mr. Dettling said. When the church moved in, members cleared the hills of trees and coastal scrub that have since regrown.
“In the early 90s, you could see the ocean from the parking lot, but now it’s a forest,” he said. “With the change in vegetation, the [avian] community has changed as well.”
Douglas firs have brought more Swainson’s thrushes and Wilson’s warblers, while white-crowned sparrows and song sparrows have diminished in numbers.
The bird-a-thon
This Friday, Sept. 15, marks the kickoff of the 45th annual Rich Stallcup Bird-a-thon, a month-long scavenger hunt-style tradition wherein contestants raise money for conservation science. The event is open to all ages and, since the beginning of the pandemic, to contestants anywhere in the country.
“Whether you’re a beginner, a dedicated recreational observer or a leading avian ecologist, I love that there’s something in this event for everyone,” said Zachary Warnow, a spokesman for Point Blue. “We have some younger students in the middle school range that just kind of crush it. I love that and we also have people in their 70s and 80s.”
Individuals or teams choose a route and a 24-hour period during which to survey. One perk of this year’s bird-a-thon is the Marcia Grand Challenge, named after a longtime donor to Point Blue. Any team that identifies one mammal, amphibian or reptile receives an additional $50 from Ms. Grand, up to $150.
Participants solicit donations based on either the number of species recorded or a flat fee. This year, Point Blue’s goal is to raise $85,000.
Last year, 27 teams clocked in over $86,000 and counted 231 species. The Drakes Beach Sanderlings team, a group of mostly youngsters, counted the most, with a whopping 157 species. Mill Valley resident William Legge was on the north side of Rodeo Lagoon on the Marin Headlands when he secured the first-ever sighting on the North American mainland of a Eurasian willow warbler. The sighting drew birders from as far as Texas.
Heather Cameron is a Novato resident whose first bird-a-thon was in 1997 with the Marin Ninja Kinglets, alongside Mr. Stallcup. Now she leads her own group of birders, the Marin Merlins. She said birding with Mr. Stallcup was a surreal experience in which intuition and improvisation met conservation science and intense travel.
“He was known for a sort of magic,” she said. “His instincts were incredible. We would have a certain plan in place and then Rich would say ‘No, we’ve got to go here now,’ and we’d find a rare bird there. We’d do the West Marin interior, east, south and west, to get to all the key habitats, just as we do now.”
In 2001, her team set the current record, at 186 species.
To learn about visiting the Palomarin Field Station, go to https://www.pointblue.org/engage-with-us/blogs/palomarin/. For information about the bird-a-thon, go to https://www.pointblue.org/engage-with-us/events/.