Young Ancient Murrelets

It all started when…

A few years ago, I received a request from an adult student at Petaluma Adult School to allow her 14-year-old daughter to join the class. This is how I met mother and daughter Beverly and Danielle Dube. All the other class members and I fell in love with 14-year-old Danielle immediately. Her love of birds and her expressive drawings of birds impressed us all.

This inspired me to start a birding club for youth. So, I went on a search for young people with birding interests. It didn’t take me long to find Mario Balitbit, birding with his dad and Rob O’Donnell at Bodega Bay. I ran the idea by him, and I couldn’t get a more enthusiastic response. Bill Doyle recommended Luke Campbell, who regularly came to RROS field trips, notebook in hand, writing down all observations with his grandfather, Glenn.

So, on September, 2014, we had our first youth group birding field trip at the Laguna de Santa Rosa Trail. I was a member of the Point Blue Bird-a-thon Committee at the time. I decided that Point Blue needed more youth teams and I invited Mike Parmeter to co-lead this youth team. I wanted to connect the birding generations. I also drafted Nicole Bardon to help out as she does a fantastic job through the environmental education program at Pepperwood Preserve.

We did our first Bird-a-thon as the Sonoma County Youth Team on October 25, 2014. We had 3 youths – Mario, Luke and Danielle and several adults. We had a blast that day. We saw 121 species, and raised about $500 for Point Blue Conservation Science. We were all beaming at the end of the day. One of the highlights of the day was finding Gabriel Tarantino on Bodega Head, birding with his family friend Scott Sorby. The instant we met, I wanted to just throw Gabe in the car and have him join us the rest of the day. I got his contact information instead.

On our next field trip, we added Will Anderson (recommended by Sonoma County naturalist Dave Barry) to the group. We went to Bodega Bay. While we were on Bodega Head, we all observed Ancient Murrelets. It was a life bird for all of the youth members. As we were having lunch that day, we brainstormed different names to call ourselves. Names like "Sonoma County Youth Birders" and "Passerine Penetrators" were tossed around. Then, we all settled on "Young Ancient Murrelets". It was perfect. And "YAMS" was born.

Not long after, we added Lucas Stephenson. I met Mark (Lucas’ dad) and Lucas at Ellis Creek one day while I was teaching an adult birding class. Lucas was timid at first, but curiosity overpowered his shyness and he was soon asking dozens of questions about birds, and he just had to be invited into the group.

Since then, we have added Morganna, Beatrice, Aiden, Junco, and our newest members Nolan and Clayton.

Of course, the downside of forming a youth group is that youth don’t stay "youth" forever. It’s hard to let go of YAMS members as they grow out of our group. But I am so proud of each one of them. Stay tuned in the future to meet our YAMS individually.

Lisa Hug
YAMS Coordinator

You can find the YAMS information and donation page for the Rich Stallcup Point Blue Bird-A-Thon team at:

https://pointblue.securesweet.com/teampage.asp?fundid=880#.X4irCtBKi1t

Download the YAMS Application by clicking here below. Open to 8-18 year olds:

What Have the YAMS Been up to?

January 16, 2022 – Jenner Headlands.  

YAMS had a fantastic field trip to Jenner Headlands on January 16th. We started the new year off with a 4-mile hike. We observed a bobcat from the parking lot and had excellent views of Bald Eagles, Ferruginous Hawks and Peregrine Falcons. One Downy Woodpecker had a close encounter with a Peregrine Falcon and was lucky to survive. Participants were Bea and Tony Pezzolo, Clayton and Brandy Rucker, and Aubrey and Dana Phipps.

YAMS Participate in Rich Stallcup Bird-A-Thon
October 2021

A little before 7:00 a.m. Bea Pezzolo, Brandy Rucker, Clayton Rucker, Charlie Melin and myself met in the cold half-light at the Sebastopol Community Center. Bea and the Ruckers have been regulars on YAMS field trips for a few years. Charlie was a special guest – a family friend of the Ruckers from Jamestown in the Sierran foothills. We were excited to do the bird-a-thon in person this year. But, as we set out to do our normal hike from the Community Center to the pond on the Laguna Trail, we discovered that the seasonal bridge across the Laguna had already been taken down for the winter. We had to drive around to the Chevron gas station on Highway 12. We walked the frigid loop from there. We didn’t make it all the way to the pond, but we picked up over 40 species to start the day off. The highlight was a beautiful male Northern Harrier that hunted the over meadow as it glowed in the light of the morning sun.

We then decided to visit Ragle Ranch Regional Park, mainly for a bathroom stop, but also to pick any odds and ends that we may have missed. This paid off, as we added Townsend’s Warbler and Band-tailed Pigeon to our already substantial list. But the price was high as there was a huge soccer tournament at Ragle which limited our parking possibilities and slowed us down considerably.

I then made the decision to drive past Salmon Creek Road and go straight to Bodega Bay. I was concerned about getting to the coast too late and Doran Regional Park being full of visitors and therefore closed. We were in luck. The park was open and not too crowded. The tide was slightly high for shorebirds, but we picked up birds on the ocean side of the spit – including Snowy Plover. We then had a comfortable lunch break in perfect temperatures, sunshine and no wind. There were Surfbirds on the jetty as we dined. We also found more birds on the mudflats on our way out and as the tide dropped.

We all knew about 3 possible “lifers” that awaited most us on the north shore of the harbor – Long-tailed Duck, Tropical Kingbird and Palm Sarbler. First, we scanned the large scaup flock a few times, but couldn’t find the Long-tailed Duck. The light was glary, the ducks were distant, and time was short. We weren’t too discouraged though as we looked twice for the Tropical Kingbird. I knew the exact location of this bird, but it just didn’t show itself in the time we allotted for its search. We were starting to feel just a little down at this point. But the Palm Sarbler saved the day! It took a while to find it, but when we did, it was cooperative. In typical Palm Warbler fashion, it alternated between foraging on the ground and in the low bushes as it merrily bobbed along. While we were enjoying these views, we received a text from Josh Snead and the Valfers informing us that there was a Nashville Warbler under Diekmann’s Store. We went to Diekmann’s but by the time we got there, the Nashville Warbler had either just left, or simply did not want to be seen. It can be especially difficult to search for rare birds during a bird-a-thon because of the time element involved.

By this time, we had been at Bodega Bay for quite a long while. Bird-a-thon days are not just about how well you bird, but it is also about time-budgeting, knowing when to cut your losses and move on, when and how far to travel. We usually go up to the Chanslor Ranch to see the Tricolored Blackbirds, but we still hadn’t been to Salmon Creek Road. So, again, we decided to start heading south, or we might not get to Petaluma before dark and there were birds waiting for us there.

We eventually did get to Salmon Creek Road and there we added Steller’s Jay, Pacific Wren, Pygmy Nuthatch, Pine Siskin, Ferruginous Hawk, Hairy Woodpecker and Wild Turkey.

We were very happy now as we headed further south. We made a fruitful stop along Carmody Road. We had nice looks at Long-billed Dowitchers and Greater Yellowlegs. We were lucky with Lark Sparrow, and the larger north pond gave us our only Canada Geese and a Wilson’s Snipe.

We made it to Shollenberger Park while the light was still bright enough to see Long-billed Curlew, American Avocets and Least Sandpipers. As we retreated from the levee, the sun got lower and it started to feel dusky. We arrived at Ellis Creek Recycling Facility at twilight. We had just enough light to find a Sora walking around only a few feet from us. As we hiked around the ponds, we picked up several species of ducks including Cinnamon Teal, Northern Shoveler, and Gadwall.

It felt very special to be able to have our traditional pizza party at Mountain Mike’s at the end of our long day. Tony Pezzolo joined us there, and we had someone to tell all about our day. We tallied up a total number of 111 bird species for the day. We did A-OKAY! Our guest, Charlie, got over 70 life birds for the day! I think his cheek must have been sore the next day from smiling so much. YAMS have had bird-a-thons with higher species totals in previous years, but I don’t think we have ever had a bird-a-thon where we all had so much fun!!

It is still possible to donate to the Point Blue Conservation Science Rich Stallcup bird-a-thon by going to https://pointblue.securesweet.com/

If you know a birder (or are a birder) between the ages of 8 and 18 who would like to join our Youth Group, the Young Ancient Murrelets (YAMS), contact Lisa Hug at Lisahug@sonic.net.

Lisa Hug
YAMS Coordinator