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Latest News and Updates from Audubon in California

California Condor. Photo: Scott Frier/USFWS

Birds with bad attitudes
Audublog

Birds with bad attitudes

Los Angeles-based artist Matt Adrian, a.k.a. Mincing Mockingbird, paints birds with ... colorful personalities.

Creating Shorebird Habitat on Duck Clubs in the San Joaquin Valley
Audublog

Creating Shorebird Habitat on Duck Clubs in the San Joaquin Valley

Audubon California partnered with duck clubs in the San Joaquin Valley to provide critical habitat for migrating shorebirds by stretching water through the spring.

Climate bills working their way through California Legislature
Global Warming

Climate bills working their way through California Legislature

Lawmakers are addressing bills to extend California's cap-and-trade system, ban specific pollutants, and embrace the carbon capturing power of natural and agricultural landscapes.

​Los Angeles County parks measure will have multiple benefits for people and birds
Audublog

L.A. County parks measure is a great deal for people and birds

— Ballot measure will raise nearly $95 million a year to build and maintain L.A. County parks, connecting millions to the outdoor world and bolstering habitat for birds.
Marcos Trinidad on his love for the Salton Sea
Water

Marcos Trinidad on his love for the Salton Sea

The Debs Park director says he'll do whatever it takes to make sure future generations get the joy he does from this special lake.

What is geothermal power, and how might it save the Salton Sea?
Audublog

What is geothermal power, and how might it save the Salton Sea?

Geothermal has the potential to be the renewable energy to help humans and birds in the area.

Seed-eating birds to suffer as climate keeps changing

The Cedar Waxwing, which feeds on mostly berries with the occasional insect, is one of many seed, nut and berry-eating birds which will be most threatened by higher temperatures. Photo: Yuri Timofeyev/Flickr

From the melodies of songbirds to the drumming of woodpeckers, birds have long been associated with the sound of spring. Unfortunately, recent research suggests that climate change is driving changes in the calendar period we currently call spring—and that these changes are harming herbivorous and mostly-herbivorous birds.

Specifically, the research observed how different “springtime events” associated with the reproduction of various species has changed with climate in the United Kingdom. The study found that temperature, rather than precipitation, had the largest influence on the timing of breeding in birds and flowering in plants. Although these dates shifted for most animals, the most harmful consequences were found in primary consumers. Primary consumers are essentially the middle of the food chain, or animals that eat plants but are prey to other animals.

While primary consumers include insects, it also means seed-eating birds such as Larks, Cardinals, Finches and Sparrows. In California, environmental toxins and hunting have often threatened our higher-in-the-food-chain predators such as the California Condor and Brown Pelican. Unfortunately, climate change is beginning to threaten the smaller birds too—the ones we may sometimes take for granted as an inherent part of our springtime surroundings.

Cannes critic calls Nivea bird poop commercial the worst he's seen

This commercial for Nivea sunscreen has the critics talking, and not for the right reasons. "Care from the Air," was submitted for Cannes consideration by its agency, Jung von Matt/Elbe. Bartle Bogle Hegarty co-founder and Cannes Lion jury president Sir John Hegarty described the premise of the piece to journalists at Cannes.

"The big, big problem is kids on beaches don’t have enough sunscreen on. They run around and it rubs off. So they developed a [robotic] seagull that flies across the beach and basically shits suntan cream from Nivea. This is, as you can understand, something we had to take very seriously. It’s the most stupid thing I think I’ve seen in my whole life. I actually thought the Monty Python team had gotten together and entered it into [Cannes], to see if we would vote for it.” 

Is this judge's take too harsh? We can't help but think that at least this is an ad where the often maligned gull gets to play the hero.

(via Adweek)

Yellow-breasted Chat banded at Starr Ranch Sanctuary
Audublog

Yellow-breasted Chat banded at Starr Ranch Sanctuary

This is the first time the species has been seen on the Sanctuary in 25 years.

New state budget includes more than $80 million for Salton Sea restoration effort

American White Pelicans at the Salton Sea. Photo: Socaltimes via Flickr/creative commons

Conservation groups including Audubon California hope that more than $80 million included in the recently-approved state budget will be the first step in a longer, more substantial commitment from the Legislature to addressing the developing environmental crisis at the Salton Sea. The $80.5 million for planning and restoration at the Salton Sea, part of the $167 billion state budget, will ultimately come from Proposition 1 funds approved by voters in 2014.

While the new funding marks the largest amount that the State of California has ever contributed to restoration at the Salton Sea, it is nonetheless only a fraction of the several billion dollars that will be needed to stabilize the situation there.

The funding will help the state pay for the development of a long-term management plan that seeks to address the problems created by reduced water deliveries to California’s largest inland lake. As the Salton Sea shrinks in the coming years, it is expected to have serious ramifications for the more the 400 species of birds that rely on its habitat. Less water will also result in the exposure of hundreds of acres of plays, creating a toxic dust and a serious public health hazard.

Money will also jump-start restoration of habitat along the edge of the lake, creating infrastructure to move water to a number of habitat areas.

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