Eagles in Alameda
I took on subbing more classes over the holidays otherwise I wouldn’t have been on Bay Farm Island on Wednesday. On the southern end of Alameda, Bay Farm Island is really a peninsula. While the land there was once used to farm asparagus and raise oysters, now its home to a golf course, a health club, a business park and a bunch of well-maintained housing developments. There’s a nice walking path around Bay Farm's perimeter with excellent views of the San Francisco Bay. The Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary is directly across from Harbor Bay Club so there’s also great birding possibilities. But I rarely hang out there.
On Wednesday though, I was just about to pull away from the curb when I heard someone honked their horn. I was surprised to look up and see my writer friend Elizabeth, idling her car in the street.
"Hey!” I said. “Did you join the club?"
"No, I'm here to see the Bald Eagles!"
"Bald Eagles?!" I stopped the car and got out.
"I just saw someone post about seeing them on Nextdoor," she explained.
It didn’t surprise me as much delight me to know Bald Eagles were in Alameda. While numbers were down for many of the usual raptor species on Hawk Hill this fall, Bald Eagle sightings were about double the yearly average. After nearly going extinct in the lower 48 and subsequent years of conservation efforts, Bald Eagles numbers have been steadily increasing throughout the US and in the Bay Area. In recent years, several pairs have taken up residence in the Bay Area along large bodies of water such as Crystal Springs Reservoir1 and Pescadero Marsh2. I wouldn’t be surprised if this new Alameda pair stuck around.
"They're supposed to be near the Harbor Bay tennis courts." Elizabeth told me. We walked a big circle around the club, down Island Drive, and along the edge of the Corica Park Golf Course, looking into treetops. There were more than a few mature looking evergreens along the courts and in the golf course that looked especially suitable for a large raptor to perch.
I flashed back to my junior and senior years of college, when I was interning at the Predatory Bird Research Group and working summers at hack sites. Along with efforts to restore Peregrine Falcon populations, PBRG worked with the Ventana Wildlife Society to release more than sixty Bald Eagles along the Central Coast during the late 1980s and early 90s3. In 1989, one of my classmates Greg was working at the Eagle release site in Big Sur (now the site of the California Condor Sanctuary) and I was able to visit. Shortly after I arrived at the camp in the Ventana Wilderness, one of the Bald Eagles flew out of range of their telemetry. We ended up getting back in Greg's Honda and tracking the bird back up the coast to Carmel…and the Pebble Beach Golf Course, where we eventually found the bird in a tree in a tall tree alongside the green.
Last Wednesday, Elizabeth and I saw one Red-Tail Hawk land on a tree along the Island Drive side of Corica Golf Course, but we didn’t see any eagles. Nonetheless, it was a great excuse to catch up, something we couldn't have coordinated if we tried amid the hubbub of getting ready for the holidays. Most of my free time had been spent getting the house together for Christmas dinner; Elizabeth was leaving town that afternoon for her family’s holiday. She had hoped to see the eagles before she left town.
A few days later, on Christmas Eve, in need of a break from cooking and cleaning, Kwame and I parked the car at Grand Ave and Shoreline and headed up the beach toward the Elsie Roemer Sanctuary on foot, keeping an eye out for large birds. Just as we were reaching the slender sanctuary trailhead, I spotted a very large bird with a white tail flying low over the Bay, dwarfing the flocks of shorebirds, gulls and terns, and land on the chimney of one of the bay-facing houses. By the time we joined the small group who quickly assembled to goggle at the bird, several crows had started to buzz the eagle as well. The eagle didn’t even glance at the crows. A man ran out of his house with a camera. I did a little jig. Everyone was stoked. We all oohed and ahed while the eagle gazed over the water, appearing imperturbable. A woman who was picking trash out of the mudflats stood up from her efforts to tell us she heard the eagles had begun to build a nest by the golf course.
A few minutes later, the bird lifted its wings and flew across the Bay and landed on a large tree along Bay Farm Island’s shore. We could just make out its silhouette as we walked back toward the beach. It looked very much at home. I texted Elizabeth to let her know she’d likely be able to see them when she got back into town.
‘Bay Area Bald Eagles: Slow But Steady Growth For The National Bird’ by Allen Fish, Golden Gate Parks Conservancy
‘For The Second Time in 100 Years, Bald Eagles Prepare to Nest in San Mateo County,’ by Stephanie Gee, Coastside State Parks Association
‘Central Coast Bald Eagles Now Fully Restored,’ Ventana Wildlife Society.