Bird Day returns to Santa Rosa’s Abraham Lincoln Elementary

The group of Santa Rosa elementary college students was pitter-pattering close to a lawn off West Ninth Street, peering into recognizing scopes amid a racket of squawking, shrieking and flapping wings.

The sights and sounds all meant one point: just after two decades of hiatus, Bird Working day was again at Abraham Lincoln Elementary University.

“It’s a phenomenal practical experience,” said Principal Jeanine Wilson. “You can’t just pull this out of a ebook.”

She was touting the out of doors lesson on the consuming behavior, migration patterns and improvement of egrets and herons, species that use their very long necks and legs and eager eyes to hunt in and around waterways.

The elementary pupils watched them Friday through spotting scopes thoroughly arranged by volunteers with Audubon Canyon Ranch.

The conservation groups Audubon Canyon Ranch and Madrone Audubon Modern society have for decades researched these birds, who on a yearly basis get up residence in the blue gum eucalyptus trees bisecting Ninth Road, just yards absent from the college.

“Look at the tall a single!” a initial-grader claimed to his buddies as they took turns peering into the scope that Emiko Condeso, ecologist with Audubon Canyon Ranch, had organized. The university student pointed to a good egret preening in the greatest section of just one of the trees.

The extended-legged wonderful egrets, scaled-down snowy egrets, black-topped night time-herons and cattle egrets — distinguished by orange plumage on their heads — all nest in the trees.

And the West Ninth Road web-site is 1 of the ideal-regarded Bay Space rookeries.

Jonathan Cruzcruz, a sixth-grader, mentioned he liked the seem of the black-crowned night time-herons ideal.

“I like how its eyes are dazzling purple, and the babies are so smooth,” he stated.

The cluster of 210 nests on West Ninth Road is a key web-site for scientific study, far too, with observers tracking the birds’ actions and demands.

Monthly bill Bridges, a volunteer with Audubon Canyon Ranch, claimed he has arrive quite a few situations in excess of the earlier several months to depend the amount of nests and chicks.

“It’s awesome to have four distinct species in one site,” he stated.

Why do the birds pick to make their nests along a key route in a residential region of Santa Rosa?

“We do not 100% know,” Condeso, the ecologist, reported.

Susan Kirks, president of the Madrone Audubon Modern society, hypothesized that basic safety from avian predators is a key draw: no bald or golden eagles venture that considerably into civilization.

Passing targeted visitors is the main risk if a child fowl falls from the nest, but Madrone Audubon Modern society members have worked to limit the chance by erecting a perimeter of building fencing all over each and every tree and laying down straw to break their tumble.

Sonoma County Chook Rescue normally takes the fallen chicks to be rehabbed at the Intercontinental Fowl Rescue in Fairfield. Later, volunteers launch them in the Laguna de Santa Rosa, Condeso mentioned.

During the 25 years they’ve been nesting together West Ninth Road, the birds have been a supply of equally ire and excitement.

When the mastering experiences they provide are welcomed, their droppings and the consistent cacophony as they occur and go have been considerably less so appreciated by the citizens of the bordering neighborhoods.

Even now, a long time of Chook Day gatherings in which students understand about the ecological significance of the web site have helped sleek some feathers, organizers stated.

Audubon Canyon Ranch staff members have also sought to deepen the understanding knowledge by developing a curriculum teachers can use to introduce biology and ecology concepts to pupils in advance of the major occasion. They incorporate a terrific egret graphing lesson and exercise textbooks centered on Ephran the Egret.

“They start off to regard the animals and the environment and their community in a considerably distinctive way,” Wilson reported. “We can train it in the classroom, but when Audubon comes with the scopes and they get to see up near and personal and they listen to it, it seriously can make a big effect that they remember permanently.”

You can reach Staff members Author Kaylee Tornay at 707-521-5250 or [email protected]. On Twitter @ka_tornay.