Birds & Birding

The Real Birds That Inspired Hitchcock’s Thriller

Sep 18, 2026 | Adventures, Birds & Birding, Birds of Prey, Climate Change, Coast, Environment, Marine science, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans, Outdoors, Plants & Flowers, Seabirds

“Come to the beach—NOW!”

I scan the urgent texts from neighbors and naturalists and bolt out the door. Racing over the dunes, I hear a cacophony of squawks, bleats and cries. Then I see the birds—thousands swirling in great swooping waves, wing to wing, their dark feathers blotting the sun, their sleek bodies wheeling over the sea.

“It looks like something out of Hitchcock,” an onlooker says.

In fact, a scene like this one occurred not far from the director’s house on the Central Coast a few months before he started shooting The Birds. On August 18, 1961, masses of crazed birds invaded the town of Capitola, colliding into buildings and smashing onto cars.

Summer School for Seabirds

Jul 10, 2026 | Adventures, Animals, Birds & Birding, Coast, Ecology, Marine science, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans, Outdoors, Seabirds

There’s a baby boom on the northern California coast.

Cliffs and offshore rocks that seemed almost lifeless through winter are teeming with seabird families. Through my binoculars, I watch tiny Western Gulls wobbling on spindly pink legs, secretive Pigeon Guillemots ferrying fish into invisible nests, and Common Murres preparing their youngsters for one of the most astonishing leaps in the bird world.

A Nest to Call Home

May 29, 2026 | Adventures, Animals, Birds & Birding, Marine science, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans, Outdoors

The mission: Construct a home for soon-to-be-born offspring.

The rules: Use only scavenged materials. Carry them to the site in your mouth. Employ nothing but your appendages as tools. Ensure shelter from wind, water, and roving bandits.

The seabirds in love introduced in a previous post set to work. As monitors for the Seabird Protection Network on the Northern California coast, we watch and wonder: Where can these parents-to-be, who spend much of the year over open water, find safe haven on our rugged shore?

Dressed to Impress: Seabirds in Springtime

Apr 17, 2026 | Animals, Birds & Birding, Coast, Nature, Ocean Life, Seabirds

Forget Fashion Weeks and designer salons. Every Spring, seabirds along the Northern California coast stage their own spectacle of high-flying couture—with stakes far higher than any catwalk. These oceanic aviators dress, not for success, but for the survival of their species.

Do You Speak BIRD?

Nov 14, 2025 | Adventures, Birds & Birding, Coast, Ecology, Environment, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans, Outdoors, Seabirds

The chartered fishing boat plows through the swells due west from the Sonoma coast with nary an angler on board. Birders—sheathed in slickers, binoculars slung around their necks—line the railing. As my maiden voyage begins, cryptic cries erupt around me.

Fly like a Raptor

Oct 17, 2025 | Adventures, Animals, Birds & Birding, Birds of Prey, Coast, Ecology, Environment, Nature, Outdoors, Raptors, Seabirds

Once again they are on the wing. Along the Pacific Flyway—a 4,000-mile corridor stretching from Alaska to Baja— millions of birds of many feathers and forms are flying south to warmer climes. But none dazzle the eye and stir the soul more than raptors, meat-eating birds of prey that include falcons, hawks, vultures and eagles.

The (Brown) Pelican Brief

Sep 19, 2025 | Animals, Birds & Birding, Birds of Prey, Coast, Ecology, Environment, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans

The streets where I live are named for California birds: Heron, Gull, Osprey, Loon, Kittiwake and, in my case, Pelican. When asked if I ever see real pelicans on their namesake block, I am delighted to say “Yes!”. From early summer into fall, briefs–—also called squadrons, pods and scoops—of Brown Pelicans glide majestically overhead.

The Uncommon Saga of a “Common” Seabird

Jul 11, 2025 | Adventures, Animals, Birds & Birding, Birds of Prey, Coast, Ecology, Environment, Nature, Ocean Life, Oceans, Outdoors, Seabirds

Over the last 175 years, common murres (pronounced murrs) have been pushed to near-extinction by greed, pollution and a warming ocean. But in a remarkable turn, the “penguins of California” are establishing new breeding colonies and laying eggs on rocks and outcroppings off the Sonoma coast.

Despite their name, common murres are anything but ordinary. On land they waddle in dapper black-and-white plumage. Under water they dive like torpedoes. In the air, their short wings—better suited to swimming than soaring—beat furiously, whirring like wind-up toys. About the size of a football, murres spend most of the year over open water. But each Spring they return to the stony sites where they were born to cluster in densely packed colonies.

The Magic of Nature’s Vanishing Act

Jan 17, 2025 | Adventures, Animals, Birds & Birding, Botany, Climate Change, Coast, Ecology, Environment, Nature, Outdoors, Plants & Flowers

They appear like mirages in the dark of winter, burst into full-throated glory in Spring and fade away with the summer sun. Vernal ponds remind me of Brigadoon, the Scottish village in the classic musical that comes to life for one day every hundred years. The first time I came upon a gleaming pond in a field that had been dry just weeks before, I was as stunned as if a bag-pipe-playing Highlander had suddenly materialized.

The Rapture of Raptors

Sep 27, 2024 | Adventures, Animals, Birds & Birding, Coast, Nature, Outdoors

As I swerve along California’s Route 1, a small brown rodent darts across the road. Looking up, I hear a piercing shriek and see a broad-winged bird hurtling from on high. A few feet above my open-top convertible, the avian assassin, talons outstretched, tail fanned and beak gaping, brakes to a mid-air stop, flounces its feathers and jets back to the heavens. I watch, utterly enraptured.

Birds & Birding

The Real Birds That Inspired Hitchcock’s Thriller

Summer School for Seabirds

A Nest to Call Home

Dressed to Impress: Seabirds in Springtime

Do You Speak BIRD?

Fly like a Raptor

The (Brown) Pelican Brief

The Uncommon Saga of a “Common” Seabird

The Magic of Nature’s Vanishing Act

The Rapture of Raptors

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