This month’s meeting and presentation by Mario Balitbit will be streamed live to all members with internet access. Streaming via Zoom will allow virtual attendance for many who otherwise could not attend in person, even pre-COVID!

6:50 pm Zoom login open. Meeting to start at 7:00 pm, beginning with a short business meeting.

"Seabird Intern on Southeast Farallon Island”, a first hand look at research experience on the Farallon Islands as coordinated with Point Blue, will be presented by local birder extraordinaire, Mario Balitbit. Mario has been birding in Sonoma county since his early teens. He's in his final year of study at Humboldt State University where he has been working towards a degree in Wildlife Management and Conservation.

Mario worked through Point Blue, an organization that has been studying the wildlife and natural history of Southeast Farallon Island since 1968. The 96-acre rocky island is located 27 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, within a productive upwelling region near the edge of the continental shelf. The Farallon Islands host the largest seabird breeding colony in the contiguous United States (over 300,000 seabirds of 13 species), are an important haul-out and breeding site for 5 species of Pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), and are a unique feeding location for white sharks. In addition, the islands host an endemic plant, salamander, and insects, and represent a key a stopover site for hundreds of species of migrant and vagrant landbirds. The diversity of research conducted on the Farallons provides young career scientists with an opportunity to gain a wide array of experience in wildlife observation, handling, and data collection.

And we get to “virtually visit” the Farallon Islands, a very great privilege indeed.

For Zoom instructions and login, please email auodonnell@gmail.com.