Bird Cities – Birding across the Bay

Instructors: Whitney Grover (wgrover@goldengatebirds.org) and Keith Maley

This course will focus on field trips to develop our birding skills. We will explore some of the best urban bird habitat in San Francisco and the East Bay to learn how birds interact with their environment. For us, birds are a way to connect with nature and in addition to identification, we will be thinking about birds in the context of their habitats and ecosystems. The class will start with a Sunday field trip, followed by a Monday night lecture, repeated for four weeks. Each Monday night lecture will begin with a review of the birds we saw in the field the day before, dive into a short topic, and end with a preview about the upcoming field trip and its ecosystem components. Lecture topics will include taxonomy and anatomy, habitat and range, migration and movement, and conservation advocacy. 

Field trips are longer than many Golden Gate Bird Alliance classes: 4 to 6 hours of walking and standing. Each trip will cover several miles over hills, stairs, uneven terrain, and sand. The walking pace will be faster than Golden Gate Bird Alliance's usual field trips to allow us to cover more ground. 

If you’ve taken one of Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s beginning birding courses, or have birded on your own for 1 to 2 years, you are ready to enjoy participating in this course.

Field trip locations: Arrowhead Marsh, MLK Jr. Regional Shoreline in Oakland, 8 am to 12 noon. Golden Gate Park Chain of Lakes to Ocean Beach in San Francisco, 8 am to 12 noon. Lands End, Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, 8 am to 12 noon. Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont, 8 am to 2 pm. 

Recordings of the lecture presentations will be available to class participants  for a limited period of time.
    
 Four Monday night Zoom lectures: October 27; November 3, 10,17: 6 pm to 8 pm

     (Zoom link will be provided when you register.)

Four Sunday morning field trips, October 26; November 2, 9, 16 (locations and times above)    

Class Size: Limited to 20 participants.

Price: $380 ($304 for GGBA members, a 20% discount).

Registration opens at 1 pm on Wednesday, August 6 and closes at 11 pm on Thursday, October 23.