Tim Bray President Audubon Society Mendocino Coast CA - Birds: Their World on Our Coast & How to See Them

The mission of the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society is to help people appreciate and enjoy native birds, and to conserve and restore local ecosystems for the benefit of native birds and other wildlife. President Tim Brey talks about the work they do, and the programs they offer for observing birds and other wildlife here on our coast, and the oftentimes negative impact humans can have on them and what we can do about that.

Tim lives in Albion, Mendocino County California where he is an avid birder and leads field trips on land and at sea. He co-hosts two radio programs on NPR radio station KZYX in Mendocino County (The Ecology Hour with Bob Spies, and co-hosts a Celtic music show called Oak & Thorn with Colleen Bassett.) His other interests include brewing, gardening, cooking, woodworking, and history.

Field Trips: Field trips are usually scheduled on the second  Saturday of the month, September through June, to local birding hot spots.  

MCAS-led bird walks at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens are scheduled year-round on the 1st Saturday and the  3rd Wednesday of each month. While these walks are free, the Gardens will charge a guest fee for those not yet Gardens members.

Mendocino Coast Audubon Society supports funding for annual science scholarships at Mendocino College. Recipients are selected by science faculty staff based on academic achievement and financial need, and have participated in laboratory research at the college Field Station near Point Arena:

https://www.mendocino.edu/about/mlccd/our-campus/mendocino-college-coastal-field-station

Fort Bragg Christmas Bird Count Tim Bray

Manchester Christmas Bird Count David Jensen

Save Our Shorebirds Program Becky Bowen

The Mendocino Coast Audubon Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to the appreciation and protection of wild birds in Mendocino County.

Planet Centric Media (non-profit)
Media for a Healthier Planet: Elevating The Interconnectedness of Life & Value of Natural Resources.

Mendonoma Whale & Seal Study
Founded by Scott & Tree Mercer to document the occurrence, diversity, & behavior of marine mammals.

Sea Storm Studios, Inc.
An audio/visual production company in the Sea Ranch, CA (US)

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;29
Speaker 1
Welcome to Resilient Earth Radio, where we host speakers from the United States and around the world to talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. We also let our listeners learn how they can get involved and make a difference.

00;00;24;01 - 00;00;53;08
Speaker 2
Subscribe below and find us on Facebook and Instagram. We are Resilient Earth Radio, a project of planet centric media.

00;00;53;11 - 00;01;14;03
Speaker 1
Welcome to Resilient Earth Radio, which showcases the positive actions being taken around the world to help regenerate our planet and rebalance the climate. How they are doing it and how you can get involved. I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, along with Scott and Theresa "Tree" Mercer of the Mendonoma (Mendocino & Sonoma Coasts) Whale and Seal City. Good morning, you two.

00;01;14;03 - 00;01;16;12
Speaker 2
Good morning Leigh Anne. Morning, everyone.

00;01;16;12 - 00;01;40;22
Speaker 1
And our guest from Albion is Tim Bray. He's the president of the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society. He's an avid birder and leads field trips on land and at sea. And the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society is a 501 C3 nonprofit dedicated to the appreciation and protection of wild birds in Mendocino County. And we're going to talk about their mission.

00;01;40;24 - 00;01;44;18
Speaker 1
First, let's welcome Tim to our morning show. Good morning.

00;01;44;20 - 00;01;47;01
Speaker 3
Good morning, Leigh Anne, and thanks for having me.

00;01;47;03 - 00;02;11;07
Speaker 1
And you two also have a couple of shows on our other public radio station here in Mendocino County at KZYX. You've got a Celtic radio show, Oak & Thorn, that sounds fantastic. We want to talk to you about that a little bit. And then also, I really like the one on environment that you have to the Ecology Hour.

00;02;11;10 - 00;02;22;21
Speaker 1
So if you want to start out actually let's just hear about how you got into doing that. And then when you became president of Audubon Society two and that'll get us underway.

00;02;22;25 - 00;02;51;13
Speaker 3
Okay. Sure. Yeah. So I started with Oak and Thorne back in 2003. I moved to the Mendocino Coast in 2000. And that program was originated by Callie Bassett, who still co-hosts it. She started that show back in the 90s. It had been going for several years before I got here, and I it was one of the big attractions of coming here was having a show like that on the radio, because that kind of music is hard to hear on the radio.

00;02;51;15 - 00;03;22;11
Speaker 3
Both my wife and I are just completely devoted to it. And so in 2003, the then program director of Easy Way Ax, Mary Eichner, put out an announcement that they were looking for new people to come and help the programs. And, so I thought, well, what the heck, I'll go see what the what that's all about. And went to a meeting and it just went from there that it turned out they were specifically looking for a new co-host for Oak and Thorn.

00;03;22;13 - 00;03;23;24
Speaker 3
It went off from there.

00;03;23;27 - 00;03;29;12
Speaker 1
Well, my heritage is Celtic, so I got to listen to this stuff, right? Yeah.

00;03;29;15 - 00;03;56;11
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's part of the appeal for sure. A lot of, you know, a lot of people in America have got strong roots in Ireland, Scotland, Great Britain generally, and then we also touch sometimes on, music from what are considered other Celtic music nations or cultures, like Brittany, parts of Spain and so pretty wide ranging selection of music and a lot of fun really.

00;03;56;14 - 00;04;07;06
Speaker 3
Is it because it's been on the air now for 30 years plus? I guess it's attracted quite a following. So everywhere we go, we hear people who say they love the show. So that's really.

00;04;07;06 - 00;04;09;03
Speaker 1
Long time, 30 years.

00;04;09;06 - 00;04;12;18
Speaker 2
Certainly is. When does it air? What time?

00;04;12;21 - 00;04;16;00
Speaker 3
It's on every Sunday morning from 9:00 to 11:00.

00;04;16;01 - 00;04;17;05
Speaker 2
Okay. Thank you.

00;04;17;10 - 00;04;20;19
Speaker 1
And the Ecology hour. When does that air?

00;04;20;22 - 00;04;44;11
Speaker 3
Now, that's, that's a more recent addition. Several years ago now, Doctor Robert Spees, who become a real good friend, approached me and said, hey, Tim, let's maybe we should do a show about science. There weren't very many programs on the radio at the time about science. There was a the show The Ecology Hour with that title was on, but it was not much about science.

00;04;44;11 - 00;05;12;29
Speaker 3
It was had had its roots in activism. So in the early days, a lot of it was the timber wars and that kind of thing. And then it kind of lost focus for a while. And Bob said, let's, let's see if we can just talk about science for an hour. I know a lot of scientists. It turns out, Bob had been the chief scientist for the recovery program, working for the state of Alaska and the federal government after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

00;05;13;02 - 00;05;39;14
Speaker 3
And so that was in the 1980s. And they had a lot of money of of Exxon money to spend on science, trying to figure out basically how much damage was done and what to do about it. So it was an enormous scientific effort. So he got to know an awful lot of scientists in the course of that project, and which, of course, isn't finished, won't be finished for some time.

00;05;39;16 - 00;05;39;28
Speaker 1
That's.

00;05;40;03 - 00;06;04;08
Speaker 3
And so he just started calling up to colleagues and friends and saying, hey, we got this show on the radio, let's talk about whatever it is you're doing. And that's what we do. We just we just talked to a scientist about what kind of scientific work he's doing. And man, the stuff we've learned in that hour, in the last I think we've been doing it for about seven years now is just amazing stuff.

00;06;04;14 - 00;06;09;04
Speaker 1
And they're still cleaning up from all of that spill.

00;06;09;07 - 00;06;21;04
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's still lingering effects. There's still oil in the, you know, in the substrate, and there are still lingering toxicity effects that are being dealt with.

00;06;21;04 - 00;06;28;10
Speaker 1
After all this time. Yeah. It just shows you what an impact something like that has on our planet.

00;06;28;12 - 00;06;55;28
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah yeah. The obvious stuff gets cleaned up pretty quick. The stuff that floats on the surface, you know you can get at it so some of it can get cleaned up. That was that spill was so big. And in such a remote and rugged area that they basically just had to let the ocean clean itself up. Once the hydrocarbons get spread out wide enough to a low enough concentration, then there's some biological processes that will eventually break it down.

00;06;56;04 - 00;07;17;07
Speaker 3
But a lot of it gets lodged in. If it gets on to shore, then it gets lodged into the substrate in the under the rocks and in the in the sand in the and some of it will sink and stay on the benthic environment. And so it just is there. And it takes a very, very long time for that to break down.

00;07;17;10 - 00;07;33;16
Speaker 3
Ultimately it probably will. And little bits of it get washed out and then those get broken down. But that process, you know, it's nonlinear. So you get 90% of it in the first ten years. And then the next hundred years you get 10% of what's left. You know.

00;07;33;18 - 00;07;43;09
Speaker 1
And tell us what drew you to the Audubon Society and give the audience a kind of an overview of what your mission is and your goals. There.

00;07;43;11 - 00;08;05;24
Speaker 3
Yeah, well, I've been a birder for a long time. I had a buddy and actually in junior high school who was a really dedicated birder, even that young, he was just really fanatic about it and so kind of caught the bug from him, but not as intensely. So I bird it on and off and more or less casually as a teenager and then into college.

00;08;05;24 - 00;08;30;01
Speaker 3
And then once I got to working full time, did not so much of it. And then once I moved up here birding became a lot, took up a lot more time for me. It became, you know, much more of a, an occupation. And, there's a lot of birding to be done around here. And I ran into these people at the, at the Audubon chapter who were leading field trips, and I started going on field trips with them.

00;08;30;03 - 00;08;49;23
Speaker 3
And boy, that really got the bug back into me for it just became way more fun and something I was a lot more dedicated to. So it just kind of went from there. I just got more and more involved and they started saying, hey, why don't you help us lead these field trips? And and then I got kind of sucker punched into becoming the president.

00;08;49;25 - 00;08;55;08
Speaker 1
And how did the two of you, both Terry and Scott, how did you meet Tim?

00;08;55;11 - 00;09;07;25
Speaker 2
Tim, I think I first met you on one of the Christmas bird counts, I think, in in Manchester. Yeah, I believe that's how I first met. And Scott, you communicate with Tim a lot.

00;09;07;25 - 00;09;23;00
Speaker 4
Yeah. I was one day out there at the Peninsula. I kind of figured that had to be you. I hadn't met you personally. I think you figured out who we were. A really nice tree. But you came over with your trademark hat. He's got quite a hat he wears out in the sun. And,

00;09;23;03 - 00;09;24;24
Speaker 1
I like the hoodie you've got on right now.

00;09;24;28 - 00;09;26;29
Speaker 4
I was going to ask you, where the heck are you?

00;09;27;01 - 00;09;29;11
Speaker 3
It's cold and foggy here in Albion this morning.

00;09;29;11 - 00;09;37;16
Speaker 4
I never tried doing the interview outside of what we did once with, a radio station somewhere, and it was a mess because of the wind.

00;09;37;19 - 00;09;39;00
Speaker 3
Yeah. And,

00;09;39;03 - 00;09;41;01
Speaker 4
The. You seem to be doing well there.

00;09;41;04 - 00;09;42;20
Speaker 1
It looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi.

00;09;42;20 - 00;09;47;09
Speaker 4
I thought he was a monk when he first came on.

00;09;47;11 - 00;09;47;25
Speaker 4
You. That's how.

00;09;47;27 - 00;09;49;18
Speaker 3
Yeah. Not so much. Really,

00;09;49;20 - 00;09;56;17
Speaker 4
Yeah. I mean, someone whose reputation precedes him by ten miles and figure out who he is pretty quick.

00;09;56;23 - 00;10;00;25
Speaker 3
It's kind of a mendocino thing, isn't it? You hear about somebody, and then you just run into him.

00;10;00;26 - 00;10;28;20
Speaker 2
That's right, that's right. And before the Christmas bird counts, this is when even before we lost the community center here due to the fire, you came along and gave an incredible slide presentation to help the people who were going to be on the bird count. Wow. It was just so informative. Incredible photographs of birds. And he would tell us what to look for.

00;10;28;20 - 00;10;43;00
Speaker 2
The wing shape, the beak sheer is so helpful. And so it definitely got to know you through those as well. And then since Covid, we couldn't meet in person. But you do them online now and we try to get them on zoom.

00;10;43;02 - 00;10;44;22
Speaker 1
Nice.

00;10;44;25 - 00;11;04;24
Speaker 3
Yeah that that presentation I do with David Janssen. David. It when I think when we first came down there to do that at the sadly departed while all the community center, David was leading that and I was just kind of helping out with the slideshows. And boy, that became such a popular thing. We've done it every year now.

00;11;04;26 - 00;11;18;13
Speaker 3
Or yes, I don't even know how many years. We just kind of thought it would be, you know, let's do this because it'll be fun and it just gets more and more fun. Now we call it the slideshow bird quiz and drinking game.

00;11;18;13 - 00;11;20;20
Speaker 5
Yeah, this is.

00;11;20;23 - 00;11;23;01
Speaker 1
And why do you do this bird count?

00;11;23;04 - 00;11;49;18
Speaker 3
Yeah, there's there's another hour of discussion. The Christmas bird count, the thumbnail bit. It's the longest running citizen science project in the world. Really? It was. Yeah. It was started 112 years ago by a buddy of John James Audubon, a guy named Frank Chapman. And at that time, they used to do a thing called the side hunt. And it was the either the day of Christmas or the day before, I can't remember which.

00;11;49;18 - 00;11;57;03
Speaker 3
And they would the idea was to go out and shoot as many birds of all kinds as you could, and with a camera with dead birds at the end.

00;11;57;05 - 00;12;00;24
Speaker 1
Oh, no, with a with a gun. Okay.

00;12;00;27 - 00;12;07;02
Speaker 3
Yep, yep. Just that was the way things were done in the late 19th century and the early 20th.

00;12;07;05 - 00;12;07;26
Speaker 5
I could see.

00;12;08;00 - 00;12;10;26
Speaker 4
A way of getting a close look.

00;12;10;28 - 00;12;11;13
Speaker 1
Wow.

00;12;11;19 - 00;12;33;01
Speaker 3
So Frank Chapman thought we got to do something about that. This is not helping, right? He was an early conservationist. The conservation movement was basically just forming at that time. So he said, let's do something similar. Only instead of shooting them, let's just count them, identify them and count them and see how many different kinds of birds there are.

00;12;33;01 - 00;12;34;24
Speaker 3
Nobody knew.

00;12;35;18 - 00;12;57;09
Speaker 3
So that was the first Christmas bird count. It was so popular. They did it again. Now there are thousands of count circles. They set it up. So you you count all the birds you could find and identify within a 15 mile diameter circle. So you specify the limits of this circle, and then you get teams together and divvy up the territory.

00;12;57;09 - 00;13;06;10
Speaker 3
And they go out. And in a 24 hour period, find all the birds you can count as many of as you can identify and then tally it all up.

00;13;06;13 - 00;13;09;14
Speaker 1
I can see Diane Hitch was leading her teams.

00;13;09;16 - 00;13;10;15
Speaker 3
She totally does.

00;13;10;15 - 00;13;17;23
Speaker 1
Yeah, right here in the Sundance. Yeah.

00;13;17;25 - 00;13;25;02
Speaker 1
And we'll be right back right after this message.

00;13;25;04 - 00;13;48;19
Speaker 1
Composer and writer Eric Allman and writer lyricist Bob Garrett have written and recorded an animated musical called Wake Up, a humorous, endearing, and inspiring story about environmental awareness that appeals to all ages, with the main audience being children.

00;13;48;21 - 00;13;52;27
Speaker 1
And.

00;13;53;00 - 00;14;30;12
Speaker 5
You couldn't hear the breed if it weren't. Or at least. And the birds won't have no place to build the nest. Little kids won't learn to climb the rum and Coke, won't have no lamb. What are you gonna lean on when you rest? There ain't nothing more good natured than a free. They're dependable and loyal as can be.

00;14;30;15 - 00;14;47;23
Speaker 1
Eric and Bob are seeking like minded people to help them get this animated musical comedy finished and out in the world. As a role model to inspire and empower young people to pursue a meaningful role in rescuing Mother Earth. Cut a.

00;14;47;23 - 00;15;28;28
Speaker 5
Tree down. Build a cabin, cut a tree down. Plant more corn. Cut a tree down for a highway. Cut a tree down to keep you warm. Cut a tree down cause it blocks your view. Crops too many leaves. Every time you cut a tree down. Mother nature green tree. It's hard for me to justify. Why you cut us down for double ply and flushes down the toilet to the sea.

00;15;29;01 - 00;15;37;16
Speaker 5
A tree you go out on a limb for you. It'll stop the rain and shade you to.

00;15;37;18 - 00;15;50;01
Speaker 1
If you'd like to know more about this production, go to Wake Up the musical.com. There you will find information about the concept, the story, the production, and how you can get involved.

00;15;50;03 - 00;15;56;10
Speaker 5
There ain't nothing more good natured than a tree.

00;15;56;13 - 00;15;59;10
Unknown
They're dependable and loyal.

00;15;59;16 - 00;16;30;20
Speaker 5
As can be. While money, wives and children often need. You'll always know where you can find your dream. Yessiree there. Oh, you'll always know where you can find your tree.

00;16;30;22 - 00;16;41;12
Speaker 1
Welcome back to Resilient Youth Radio.

00;16;41;14 - 00;16;51;04
Speaker 1
There are a lot of different things that you could tell us about other situations. With the bird population up and down this coast, and what you are doing about it.

00;16;51;06 - 00;17;22;29
Speaker 3
Yeah. So Audubon, of course, is a conservation organization. So a lot of the other chapters spend most of their time and resources trying to prevent development from destroying habitat or things like that. We're super fortunate here on the Mendocino Coast. An awful lot of the key habitat is already protected. It's a lot of the coastline is state parks and has not been historically a lot of objectionable development to try to work around.

00;17;22;29 - 00;18;00;20
Speaker 3
And that might be changing. But so far, our chapter has been able to devote a lot of our effort more into educating people about birds and doing conservation kind of in a granular scale, just getting people aware that birds exist, that they need these kinds of habitats, that they have specific needs during certain times of the year and just aware of the, you know, the grandeur, the majesty and the wonder about birds, the incredible things they do, their lives are just fantastic, almost beyond imagining in some cases.

00;18;00;20 - 00;18;24;00
Speaker 3
So a lot of what we do is getting people out to see birds. Those are the bird walks at the botanical gardens, the field trips. And then we have monthly chapter programs with an invited speaker every month from September through May. And that's where we really get to learn about bird habits and habitats and just the specific things about birds that make them so marvelous.

00;18;24;02 - 00;18;47;21
Speaker 3
We have a very strong education program led by Pam Huntley, who has for many years been going into classrooms, grade school classrooms and just teaching kids about birds. So they start at an early age thinking about birds and why they're important. And of course, the kids talk to their parents. So that program reaches a lot of people. And Pam has been carrying that forward for a long time.

00;18;47;21 - 00;19;16;20
Speaker 3
For us, we have a newsletter that includes a lot of information about both local birds and sometimes what's going on elsewhere, something we're proud of. Our newsletter is available on our website. You don't even have to be a member to read it. And then we do special projects, some conservation projects, a lot of public outreach. And then we do things like our pelagic birding trips because of where we're located on the coast, with special access to some of the most amazing habitat in the world.

00;19;16;28 - 00;19;22;19
Speaker 1
What are some of the local ecosystems that you've had to restore along the coast here?

00;19;22;21 - 00;19;28;24
Speaker 3
Yeah, see, we haven't really had to do a lot of restoration work because there hasn't been a lot of development.

00;19;28;28 - 00;19;38;00
Speaker 1
So how would the impact if and when wind turbines get put in offshore? How will impact things.

00;19;38;02 - 00;20;12;17
Speaker 3
Yeah great question. So and that is something we are we're starting to educate ourselves about. The answer to that question is we don't really know what the impact will be. And so there is a great deal of study being done on that. In fact, Bob Spees and I interviewed a fellow from the National Audubon Society whose job there is specifically to answer that question and figure out what are the potential impacts on birds of the proposed offshore wind developments on North America, because there haven't been very many of them built yet.

00;20;12;20 - 00;20;31;28
Speaker 3
Most of them are still in the planning stage, but Europe has built some. And New Zealand, some other places in the world have built some. And so he's been going over to those people and saying, okay, what's happened here? What do we need to be worried about? What do we need to be looking out for? And how do we plan these things for the minimum impact?

00;20;31;28 - 00;20;54;06
Speaker 3
So that is something that's getting a lot of attention behind the scenes right now. And I think that our Audubon chapter is just becoming aware that that's something we need to get educated on. We haven't taken a position on it because we haven't needed to yet. There there is no specific development proposed for the Mendocino Coast, but we think.

00;20;54;11 - 00;21;10;00
Speaker 1
Probably in the Humboldt County, because I heard that they were putting them in up at Humboldt. I just don't know where they are in that process right now. What about the field station that is connected with the Mendocino College?

00;21;10;03 - 00;21;30;19
Speaker 3
Yeah, I, I don't know a whole lot about it. Our chapter actually makes an annual donation to those guys to kind of help them restore that. That's an older structure that the college has been trying to get it fixed up and usable, and then they use it a lot, I know, for their summer camps and things, but I'm not really super familiar with it until they actually been out there.

00;21;30;19 - 00;21;33;23
Speaker 1
Once I've been to it once, it's up there in point Arena, right?

00;21;33;23 - 00;21;59;19
Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah, it's through the storm that it lands. You know, it kind of the road to reach it runs parallel to Lighthouse Road and you get out there and it's these are the all Coast Guard facilities. It is a mirror image of the homes that the lighthouse. They're just like the same dwellings they rent at the lighthouse. And actually, Scott and I were there just a few months ago.

00;21;59;23 - 00;22;27;09
Speaker 2
One of the professors brought her marine biology class out there. So we went to give a presentation. And Sarah Bogarde often goes to talk about the seals in the area and the birds as well. The spot itself is so beautiful, and so it gives you access to just an incredible amount of ocean. It's really a beautiful spot. I'd like to see that turned into something really special.

00;22;27;11 - 00;22;54;10
Speaker 1
I've been there once when I did one of the annual walks that they do along and identify plants and talk about birds, and about the ecology of the Netherlands. I was reading on your website the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society, how it can house up to 33 people. So like 22 students and maybe 11 counselors or teachers. And this is important.

00;22;54;10 - 00;22;55;26
Speaker 1
Arena. Yeah, right.

00;22;55;29 - 00;23;12;03
Speaker 3
Yeah. Professor Zuber at the Mendocino College has a biology program, a marine biology program, and she takes her students out there, I think, and for, like a weeklong field camp. I mean, you're right, tree. It's just a fantastic spot. The location.

00;23;12;03 - 00;23;12;20
Speaker 1
Beautiful.

00;23;12;22 - 00;23;42;29
Speaker 3
You know, it's situated not only is it beautiful, but it's in this kind of habitat. It's an edge zone between different habitat types. And those two different habitat types are themselves kind of unusual. And so when you're almost in the Pacific Ocean, when you're out there and so you get the seabirds, you get land birds, you get the cetaceans and pinnipeds coming in right there, falling out right underneath you.

00;23;43;01 - 00;23;58;06
Speaker 3
And because you're out on that point, you know, you're in the migration pathway. Yeah. That whole area is a migration hotspot. Every spring and especially in the fall, it is a place that you'd be hard to find. Very many places like that on the entire coast.

00;23;58;11 - 00;24;03;01
Speaker 2
Exactly, exactly. It's it's just such a very special spot.

00;24;03;03 - 00;24;11;26
Speaker 1
Well, isn't it the furthest point out into the ocean, this peninsula where the point in a lighthouse is all along the Pacific Northwest.

00;24;12;01 - 00;24;15;22
Speaker 2
They claim it's the closest to Hawaii. Is what I the. Yeah.

00;24;15;22 - 00;24;15;25
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;24;15;26 - 00;24;17;10
Speaker 1
Right, right.

00;24;17;13 - 00;24;24;09
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's what I see. You know, when you walk out to Lighthouse Point, you're essentially in the Pacific Ocean. You just happen to be standing on land.

00;24;24;10 - 00;24;26;12
Speaker 2
That's right, that's right.

00;24;26;14 - 00;24;37;06
Speaker 1
Tell us more about how you got together and you've planned for the coming year. Give us some idea of what some of the future forward things that you're looking at.

00;24;37;09 - 00;25;08;24
Speaker 3
Yeah I'd love to. So one of them that we're just beginning to work on is there's a project that was started up in Canada by Birdwatch Canada, and it's called Motus Motte US, and it's a passive sensor, basically a little receiver. And they tag birds with these little transmitters. And every time one of them flies by within like 20km of one of these receiving stations, it gets noticed and tracked.

00;25;08;27 - 00;25;33;22
Speaker 3
And so it's a way of actually tracking bird migration across the continent. They're setting these things up everywhere they can. They're not very expensive, and they're small, fairly unobtrusive, and they're passive. So they can get a lot of data with very little effort out of these things. So we're going to try to get one of those in because it turns out Mendocino County is kind of a hole in the network.

00;25;33;23 - 00;25;42;06
Speaker 3
There's one up in northern Humboldt, maybe two. And then there's some down in Marin, I think, and then there's nothing here that's a huge gap.

00;25;42;06 - 00;25;44;16
Speaker 1
It's not even Sonoma Coast.

00;25;44;18 - 00;25;49;00
Speaker 3
I don't know if there are any on the Sonoma Coast. There might be some in southern Sonoma.

00;25;49;04 - 00;25;51;21
Speaker 1
Southern Sonoma, maybe down by bodega or something.

00;25;51;21 - 00;26;26;07
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think maybe. Yeah, I think so. So we're hoping to help with that and get something installed here. And then the big thing that's probably a multi-year project that we'll be doing kind of forever is just increasing our efforts to educate people about birds and their particular needs, and in particular, what kinds of human activities can have a real negative effect on birds and how you can just kind of change what you do a little bit and have a big positive effect on bird life.

00;26;26;07 - 00;26;50;29
Speaker 3
And specifically, I'm thinking of habitat alteration. So people like to clean their property up. And so you do pruning, brush clearing, that kind of thing. Well it turns out the brush is extremely valuable nesting habitat for a large number of birds. And there was a recent project up at the near headlands where they just removed those huge blackberry bramble thickets.

00;26;51;01 - 00;27;18;17
Speaker 3
And those things were big. They've been there for many years. And as you know, it's considered an invasive weed, heavily blackberry. It makes these huge blind bramble patches that are thick, thorny and impenetrable. So we hate them. And because they're in our way. But that thorny and impenetrability makes them extremely valuable nesting habitat for songbirds because, among other things, domestic cats don't like to go into those thickets.

00;27;19;27 - 00;27;34;27
Speaker 3
So they're a kind of refuge that is very hard for birds to find right now. As you probably know, domestic cats are a major threat to songbirds, especially in nesting season when they're nesting on or near the ground. And both the feral and houseguests can get at them.

00;27;34;29 - 00;27;39;02
Speaker 1
One of the reasons I keep mine indoors good.

00;27;39;04 - 00;27;58;23
Speaker 3
These big patches of BlackBerry turned out to be quite valuable, and a lot of birds nest in them. So if you're going to do some work on those, that's okay. Just don't do it during nesting season. And that's the message we need to get out to people, is that nesting season starts late April, runs through May and June and into July.

00;27;58;25 - 00;28;20;20
Speaker 3
By the 1st of August, almost all the songbirds of fledged you're out flying around. So if you do work at that time, they're okay. They'll adapt. They'll go find someplace else to go. But if you take out a patch of brush in May or June, you're just directly slaughtering a lot of chicks because they're stuck in their nest.

00;28;20;20 - 00;28;40;15
Speaker 3
They can't get out. So that's undoubtedly what happened up there on the headlands. And so now we need, in part that's on us. We you know, we talked to the people who are involved and they're like, oh, we didn't think about the birds. So that's our project now is to make everybody think about birds all the time. I mean, I think about birds all the time.

00;28;40;15 - 00;28;41;19
Speaker 3
Why shouldn't everybody.

00;28;41;22 - 00;29;18;13
Speaker 1
Every. Right. Well, I'm so glad that you're here with us today. This is Tim Bray, president of the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society. I'm Liane Lindsey, you're listening to Kaga and Alala 88.3 FM, a project of the Native Media Resource Center. And with me are my co-producer co-host Scott and Tre Mercer of Mindanao. A whale in seal study. They do this up there at Point Arena, really canvasing the skyline and watching as much as you can when you can.

00;29;18;15 - 00;29;42;18
Speaker 1
Now, there's been a lot of fog lately. Like Tim was saying, this is resilient Earth Radio and we've been having some fantastic guests like today to it. Tim Bray, you've got such a interesting background in history, not only with the Audubon Society, but you do An Ecology Hour on Casey Wicks, and you also do a music show on Celtic music.

00;29;42;21 - 00;29;46;16
Speaker 1
You like gardening and cooking and woodworking and history.

00;29;46;20 - 00;29;48;06
Speaker 3
Yeah. Don't forget homebrewing too.

00;29;48;07 - 00;29;51;20
Speaker 1
Oh home brewing. Yes, I did see that.

00;29;51;22 - 00;30;03;15
Speaker 4
Yeah. Don't forget the, value of the berries in those brambles. There's so many species that eat blackberries, including maybe you for your home brewing.

00;30;03;17 - 00;30;25;27
Speaker 3
You know. Yeah. Turns out that was the, That's the reason why they were taken out. There was some concern that people were eating those berries. And because the mill site contaminate and is a big public concern, someone contacted the state concerned that people might be eating too many of those berries and getting exposed to contaminants which actually stretch.

00;30;25;29 - 00;30;27;02
Speaker 1
Really? Yeah.

00;30;27;04 - 00;30;49;02
Speaker 3
Yeah, that was the proximate rationale. I'm still trying to reach someone at Etsy to find out a little more detail about that, but I don't know if you noticed, but in my background, I mean, we've been talking about what I do now, but what I used to do was work on toxic and hazardous solid waste cleanup sites. So that kind of thing is kind of in my in my bailiwick.

00;30;49;04 - 00;30;52;28
Speaker 1
Explain a little bit about that. Where where you did that.

00;30;53;00 - 00;31;13;06
Speaker 3
I did that down in the Bay area. I used to work for a big consulting company called Custom Hill Engineering Consulting, and a lot of the work that we were doing was in hazardous waste remediation, a lot of site characterization work. That was mostly what I did because there was a hydrogeologist. So a lot of it was concern over the groundwater contamination.

00;31;13;08 - 00;31;31;02
Speaker 3
So we went into a lot of industrial sites that had been polluted in various ways and tried to figure out how bad was it and what do you do about it? And I did a lot of consulting for solid waste management companies. After I left the H2O mill. I had my own consulting practice for a number of years.

00;31;32;08 - 00;31;38;29
Speaker 3
And I continued doing some of that even after I moved up here. But it just kind of tailed off. I just sort of gradually retired.

00;31;38;29 - 00;31;39;20
Speaker 2
Good.

00;31;39;22 - 00;31;44;17
Speaker 1
What were the years you were in the Bay area, and what part of the Bay area?

00;31;44;19 - 00;32;06;20
Speaker 3
See, I moved there in 1986, in the East Bay. I lived in Martinez for a while, and then in, near Walnut Creek for a while. And CSO Hill was in, over in Emeryville, over by Oakland. So that's where their offices were. But I work kind of all around the Bay at various times.

00;32;06;20 - 00;32;29;01
Speaker 1
Well, that's about the year I moved to the Bay area from Aspen, Colorado, where I had spent about ten years of my life. And when I came to the Bay area, then I went to the College of San Mateo. And then it was when I went into the San Francisco State University system. My marketing professor had a small technology company, a software company.

00;32;29;04 - 00;32;51;02
Speaker 1
It was one of the first grammar checkers, and I ended up in the technology industry for the next 20 years. But I was in the west side of the bay, and then I moved up here around 2008. Did I moved up here? But our family bought property in Mendocino County in 1980. Up by the Willits area. Yeah.

00;32;51;02 - 00;33;14;16
Speaker 1
This is a beautiful county. Mendocino County has so many pockets to it. So many environmental areas that are so different from one another. Like you were saying about that coastal area having two different types of environment together. Explain some of that to to our audience, like what the county's like and what you've discovered.

00;33;14;18 - 00;33;28;19
Speaker 3
Yeah. Okay. Sure. From a bird perspective, the Mendocino Coast is and actually designated by Audubon National Audubon Society as an eBay, an Important Bird Area. And they they have.

00;33;28;19 - 00;33;31;15
Speaker 1
Not our nation's IPA.

00;33;31;17 - 00;33;36;11
Speaker 3
IPA. Yep, yep. You can have it. You can drink an IPA in the IPA.

00;33;36;13 - 00;33;36;24
Speaker 1
There you.

00;33;36;24 - 00;33;37;23
Speaker 5
Go.

00;33;37;26 - 00;34;06;06
Speaker 3
Essentially, it's because we have this fantastic habitat that is relatively unspoiled compared to places further south in California, and it's a critical link in the migration path for a lot of birds. And also it is important winter habitat for a lot of birds. This is something that is getting increasing amounts of attention in ornithology, is the importance of the wintering habitats.

00;34;06;06 - 00;34;33;17
Speaker 3
For a lot of birds in North America, we're used to seeing birds here in the summer when they're breeding and nesting. And so we've focused for a hundred years on protecting their nesting and breeding habitats. We haven't really spent that much effort understanding their wintering habitats and how important those are. And it just so happens that a lot of birds winter here along the Mendocino Coast, seabirds in particular.

00;34;33;17 - 00;34;56;17
Speaker 3
But a lot of land birds do as well. I mean, on our Christmas bird counts, you know, that's held in the middle of winter frequently on or near the shortest day of the year. I sometimes call it the longest, shortest day, because some of us will go out at five in the morning to listen for owls. And then there's some other guys that go out and at 7:00 at night and listen for owls.

00;34;56;20 - 00;35;13;24
Speaker 3
And so it can be a really long day, even though it's the shortest day of the year. So at that time, though, we will count on that one day in one little area 15 miles across. Typically we're between 140 and 150 species of birds.

00;35;13;26 - 00;35;14;13
Speaker 1
Wow.

00;35;14;13 - 00;35;42;27
Speaker 3
So yeah, it's extraordinarily diverse. You know, that's California in general. You know, you get coastal California Christmas bird count. All of them are like that. They're in that range. And some of them further south or even higher, you get some with 200 species. But that just kind of demonstrates how important this region actually is in terms of wintering habitat as well as nesting and breeding habitat.

00;35;42;29 - 00;36;07;28
Speaker 3
So both of those things take some attention. And that's part of why this is such an exciting place. To be a birder and live here is because you can see those birds at different times of the year and watch the changes over the seasons from one, you know, we've got summer birds here, some of which will stay, but a lot of these breeders will fatten themselves up in the next two months.

00;36;07;28 - 00;36;26;08
Speaker 3
And then leave, and they'll just one day you'll go out and you won't see them at all. And at the same time, a whole bunch of other birds that are breeding right now up in Alaska and Canada will do the same thing, only they'll come down here. So there's this kind of replacement thing going on that's really fun to watch.

00;36;26;10 - 00;36;46;03
Speaker 3
And that's that's the value of paying attention. Part of the cool thing about being a birder is you notice those things that other people maybe don't happen to notice, because you have to actually be paying attention to realize that the sparrows that are in your yard now are not the same sparrows that were in your yard three months ago.

00;36;46;05 - 00;37;07;21
Speaker 3
Mendocino Coast Important Bird Area is something that I think is underappreciated, because there just isn't that many people living here. We don't really have that many birders here, so we're kind of limited in what we can do because places like Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, they got hundreds and hundreds of birders and we have a few dozen.

00;37;07;23 - 00;37;10;10
Speaker 1
How can people get involved?

00;37;10;12 - 00;37;11;10
Speaker 3
There you go.

00;37;14;03 - 00;37;42;19
Speaker 3
There are a lot of different ways, and it's pretty easy. So our website is Mendocino Coast audubon.org and that will get you the entrance to a lot of different ways to get involved. You can get our newsletter. All of our newsletters are actually published on our website. So again that's Mendocino Coast audubon.org. And you can find there our calendar of events, including the upcoming field trips and bird walks.

00;37;42;26 - 00;37;49;23
Speaker 3
So we do typically two bird walks every month at the Tentacle Gardens up there just south of Fort Bragg.

00;37;49;25 - 00;37;53;02
Speaker 1
It's such a beautiful it's like 40 acres.

00;37;53;04 - 00;37;54;01
Speaker 3
Or 27.

00;37;54;07 - 00;37;57;25
Speaker 1
47 acres, right. And all the way down to the ocean.

00;37;57;27 - 00;38;19;04
Speaker 3
Exactly right. And so a lot of different habitats there, so extremely diverse in terms of birds. We, we just did one last week. We do one on the third Wednesday of every month. I usually leave those, but there's some other people that sometimes leave them as well. Those are kind of for people with a little bit of birding experience.

00;38;19;07 - 00;38;43;09
Speaker 3
So we try to find as many birds as we can in in a morning trip. And we did 50 species. And that's fairly typical for us on that third Wednesday. What. And then David Janssen leads one on the first Saturday of every month, and that one is a beginner's bird walk. So he has no no expectation that anyone who joins that walk has any experience.

00;38;43;09 - 00;39;06;19
Speaker 3
You're welcome to a lot of experienced birders do join him on that walk, because it's still a great way to find birds. But if you know nothing at all, you can join David Johnson's Bird Walk on the first first Saturday of every month at the Botanical Gardens and just start learning. And he is a great teacher about how to find and identify birds.

00;39;06;22 - 00;39;08;28
Speaker 1
That would be me. And what were you going to say?

00;39;08;28 - 00;39;34;29
Speaker 4
It's got a year or two ago I read an article that you were mentioned in predominantly and remember the statement you made that you were out with this person who wrote the article? You're looking at a rock that had pelicans standing on it, and you made a comment as I remember, you said there are probably more pelicans standing on that rock right now than we had left in all of California during the DDT days.

00;39;35;02 - 00;39;37;06
Speaker 4
And I somewhat right with that quote.

00;39;37;08 - 00;39;55;22
Speaker 3
Yeah, the brown pelican. You know, we had that huge invasion of them starting three years ago. So in 2022 and 23 we just had thousands of brown pelicans on the coast here of Mendocino. They were just packed in on those rocks. You could stand in one spot and see a thousand brown pelicans. And I.

00;39;55;22 - 00;39;56;06
Speaker 1
Remember that.

00;39;56;06 - 00;40;23;07
Speaker 3
People yeah people now a days you know we're used to seeing pelicans out there right. But in 1972 there's a population that breeds most of the birds we see here are coming from a population that breeds in the Channel Islands off Southern California. And then there are others that breed down in Mexico and off Baja. But DDT hit them really hard.

00;40;23;09 - 00;40;49;00
Speaker 3
And so brown pelicans are one of the three great conservation success stories of the 20th century. After DDT was banned because we were losing bald eagles and peregrine falcons and brown pelicans, and it was all directly because of DDT. So in 1972, the statistic that jumps out at me is there were 500 pairs of brown pelicans attempting to breed down in the Channel Islands.

00;40;49;00 - 00;40;52;01
Speaker 3
That was the whole population. They produced one chick.

00;40;52;03 - 00;40;55;04
Speaker 1
Oh my. Out of 500. How?

00;40;55;07 - 00;41;22;26
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. And so that's a species is headed for extinction. Right? Right. If you don't do something right through it took a while to get the DDT banned and then it took a while to get it. Actually implemented, you know, and stop flooding the zone with DDT. It turns out they're still immense amounts of it on the seafloor out there, and nobody quite knows what to do about that.

00;41;22;28 - 00;41;40;11
Speaker 3
But just getting it out of the shallow water out of it was in the sewer system. So the sewage system was just flooding the ocean with it, just getting it out of that change things so much that now the brown pelican, I don't think anybody knows how many there are because they were taken off the endangered species list.

00;41;40;14 - 00;41;45;00
Speaker 3
But the guys that we've talked to say they think there's probably around a quarter of a million.

00;41;45;21 - 00;41;48;13
Speaker 1
Well now you had some questions.

00;41;48;15 - 00;42;11;06
Speaker 2
But that's such a good success story for them. And it's nice to hear when we identify the problem and we can fix it, you know, and I try not to make that mistake again. And putting chemicals the DDT goes into the fish that the pelicans eat. And it actually magnifies and intensifies as it goes up the food chain.

00;42;11;08 - 00;42;15;21
Speaker 2
And it becomes more toxic in the birds body than it was even in the fish.

00;42;15;21 - 00;42;17;12
Speaker 1
It does. Yeah. How does that happen?

00;42;17;12 - 00;42;41;28
Speaker 2
It's called bio magnification. And it gets into their tissues and their cells and it becomes, as I said, even more toxic as it goes up the food chain. So those birds were really at risk and made the shells very thin. So when Mama Bird laid eggs, she would crack them, she'd crack them and they couldn't develop. Right? Yeah, right.

00;42;42;01 - 00;43;10;12
Speaker 3
It's a weird effect. The DDT chemical interferes with the way with the chemical process that creates the eggshell, and it results in the shell being thinner and has less calcium in it. Wow. And so it's not as strong. And. Yeah, as Terry said, the eggs would just crack or crush under the weight of the incubating female. And that was true for peregrine falcons and for bald eagles, because they're predators.

00;43;10;14 - 00;43;18;04
Speaker 3
So they're eating the things that have been accumulating all that DDT. It bio accumulates as it goes up. The food chain.

00;43;18;07 - 00;43;23;01
Speaker 2
Osprey ospreys equally as affected Tim ospreys. So they're fish.

00;43;23;04 - 00;43;44;17
Speaker 3
I don't think they were for whatever reason. And I don't know why. Maybe because the fish they were eating might not have been getting as much DDT. You know the pelicans are eating the forage fish sardine or anchovies primarily. It's 92% of their diet is anchovies. And the anchovies are filter feeders. And they were ingesting a lot of it.

00;43;44;20 - 00;44;05;19
Speaker 3
So it was accumulating in the anchovies. And then the toxicity didn't really affect the adult birds themselves. It just made it impossible for them to hatch eggs because the eggs weren't strong enough. It must have affected ospreys, but it didn't drive them to near extinction like it did the eagles and the pelicans and the peregrine falcons.

00;44;05;19 - 00;44;16;03
Speaker 2
Those are the three main ones. Interesting. And right now are the pelicans at risk of bird flu. Or there was something happening a little bit south of here I think.

00;44;16;05 - 00;44;37;15
Speaker 3
Yes I'm still learning from the International Bird Rescue some details about that. But this year the anchovy population did not boom like it did in the previous three years, which is rare. Usually anchovy populations boom one year and then they don't. The next year is an off year, but this time we had a boom 2 or 3 years in a row.

00;44;37;18 - 00;45;00;13
Speaker 3
That kind of caused the Pelicans to have spectacularly successful breeding seasons. So at the end of last year there were a lot more brown pelicans than there had been for years before that because a lot of those young birds survived because there was so much food and it was so easy for them to get. So that kind of sets it up for a crash or a.

00;45;00;15 - 00;45;15;04
Speaker 3
Yeah. And this year the anchovies are not as abundant. They're not as packed in close to shore. And so the pelicans are having a harder time finding food. So there is a lot of starvation going on. Yeah. Mainly among the younger birds I think.

00;45;15;06 - 00;45;17;15
Speaker 2
Oh yeah that's sad.

00;45;17;15 - 00;45;27;07
Speaker 3
But yeah. So they kind of gave up. They have an odd nesting season. They are not as tied to the calendar as a lot of songbirds are.

00;45;28;02 - 00;45;55;01
Speaker 3
Songbirds. Their nesting is tied to the insect cycle, which in turn is tied to the budding and leafing out of the deciduous plants, which in turn is tied to the photo period. Right? The daily. So darling affects when songbirds can nest, but pelicans are not affected by that. They are affected by anchovy abundance. And that might be any old time in the summer.

00;45;55;03 - 00;46;15;26
Speaker 3
So they can breed any time from March through October. And they basically just go down there to the breeding grounds and look around, see if there's a lot of anchovies and if there are okay, let's get with it. And if they go down there and start nesting and getting in a family way, and then they find out there's not enough food, they'll just fly off and leave.

00;46;15;28 - 00;46;35;06
Speaker 3
And that's what happened this year, I think, is we were seeing pelicans earlier in the year at a time when they're normally down on the Channel Islands and they had given it up, but they may go back and do it and successfully breed because anchovies started showing up.

00;46;35;08 - 00;46;43;16
Speaker 1
We'll be right back. Right after this. Specialists.

00;46;43;18 - 00;47;26;04
Speaker 2
Cajun is sponsored in part by the village. This newly renovated commerce center in downtown Kuala is the perfect place for your business venture. Centrally located with plenty of parking on site, make the village your new business home. There are only a few spaces available left for lease, so be sure to contact them today. (707) 495-1691. As for Greg Lucas, that's the village Commerce under the clock tower in downtown Glover.

00;47;26;07 - 00;47;32;20
Speaker 1
Welcome back to Resilient Earth Radio.

00;47;32;22 - 00;48;03;01
Speaker 1
We've been talking today with Tim Bray. He's the president of the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society. And he also has a radio show about ecology Ecology Hour on Kasi. This is Kaga in Alala on the southern tip of Mendocino County. Right across the bridge from us, across the Willow River is the north Sonoma coast. I'm Liane Lindsay, host and also GM of Kaga.

00;48;03;04 - 00;48;28;11
Speaker 1
This is Resilient Earth Radio and with me, my co-producers Tre and Scott Mercer of Minda Noma whale in seal study. We do broadcast around the world on Kaga Dawg. Just click listen live and you can download that streaming app to any device. Put it on your Bluetooth on your car speaker. And did you have a comment that you wanted to say in these last couple of minutes?

00;48;28;11 - 00;48;29;26
Speaker 1
We've got like four minutes left.

00;48;30;00 - 00;48;43;18
Speaker 2
I was just really curious about those incredibly large flocks of usually the cackling geese and sometimes Canada geese that we see flying overhead. Where are they heading?

00;48;43;20 - 00;49;06;17
Speaker 3
Yeah. The tacklers. This is another great conservation success story. Believe it or not, it's now a species that used to be considered subspecies of Canada goose. But it's a separate species now, the cackling goose. And it's like a miniature Canada goose. They're smaller and they have shorter necks. So they're relatively easy to identify. And they breed, there's a race of them.

00;49;06;17 - 00;49;34;13
Speaker 3
The reason the illusion islands and those birds almost went extinct. They were down to just these tiny numbers. Not that many decades ago. They got some protection just in time and reestablished some breeding. And now they're hundreds of thousands of them. I mean, the population recovery is just astounding to the point where they're actually becoming a problem in some areas.

00;49;34;13 - 00;50;04;10
Speaker 3
There's so many Aleutian Islands, the rest up on a certain rock up, like off of Crescent City, Castle Rock, that they're trampling all the grass. And there's concern that there may be trampling down the burrows that seabirds are nesting in on that rock, because there's too many Aleutian cackling geese. So at a certain time of year, predominantly in the fall, but also in the spring, if you're out looking over the ocean, they tend to migrate over the open water.

00;50;04;13 - 00;50;13;07
Speaker 3
So you look at mile or two offshore, and you can see flocks of sometimes a thousand or more geese in one flock. And it's quite a sight.

00;50;13;10 - 00;50;17;11
Speaker 2
It is impressive. And sometimes they're allowed to.

00;50;17;14 - 00;50;42;21
Speaker 3
Exactly if they're going over you, like if there's fog pushing them in closer to shore or wind and they go right over to, you know, 1000 or 2, couple thousand geese when they're flying, they're talking to each other the whole time. And boy, oh boy, they can be out. Yeah. It's really something to experience. It is. And it's, they're eelgrass feeders and like Brant, are they like those beds?

00;50;42;21 - 00;51;02;08
Speaker 3
Because there's a lot of food in there, and they will kind of hopscotch on their migration from one area to another. And a lot of them go up into Humboldt Bay. And hang out there. But it's, they're on their way to Alaska when they're going north. And then when they go south, they're just looking for a good place to hang out for the winter basically.

00;51;02;11 - 00;51;09;26
Speaker 1
Well in this last minute, can you let our audience know how they can get involved with the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society?

00;51;09;28 - 00;51;31;25
Speaker 3
Yeah, sure. The easiest way is to go to our website, Mendocino Coast audubon.org. You don't even have to sign up for the bird walks at the gardens. You just show up. Same thing for the field trips. Some of the field trips you do have to sign up for because we have carpooling or some other kind of constraint. But most of the field trips you can just show up and we're excited about starting up our field trips schedule.

00;51;31;26 - 00;51;57;03
Speaker 3
We got a new field trip. Coordinator Matt Franks is going to be doing that, and he's got some great ideas for new places to go, so it's going to be an exciting season for us. We also have conservation work that we could use help with. If you're not a birder, and there's always board work that needs help. And several of the board members are looking for committee members to help them out with education, with programs and all the stuff that we're doing, the public outreach.

00;51;57;09 - 00;52;04;00
Speaker 3
We can always use people. So get in touch with me. My email is Audubon at McConaughey.

00;52;04;04 - 00;52;30;03
Speaker 1
That's easy. Audubon at emceeing, dawg. Thank you, Terry and Scott Mercer for helping to coordinate the show today with Tim Bray, president of the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society. I look forward to catching Oak Thorne Celtic music on Casey Y. Hex with you as host, as well as your Ecology Hour there as well. Thanks so much for joining us here on Resilient Earth Radio today.

00;52;30;03 - 00;52;33;06
Speaker 2
To thank you, Tim. It was really enlightening.

00;52;33;08 - 00;52;38;21
Speaker 4
You know, Tim does live performances too, right down the street. And before that, the community center.

00;52;38;23 - 00;52;42;00
Speaker 1
Own Point Arena. Yeah. Nice.

00;52;42;02 - 00;52;50;08
Speaker 3
Well, thanks for having me on, you guys. This was really fun. And it's always fun to talk with Terry and Scott. I really love it when I run into an out there in the.

00;52;50;10 - 00;52;50;29
Speaker 2
Same boat.

00;52;51;01 - 00;52;52;12
Speaker 3
Looking out.

00;52;52;14 - 00;52;53;21
Speaker 1
Take care. Tim.

00;52;53;24 - 00;52;54;13
Speaker 3
All right.

00;52;54;15 - 00;52;58;11
Speaker 1
Thank you, Scott and Tre Mercer for being here with me today on Resilient Earth Radio.

00;52;58;11 - 00;52;59;19
Speaker 2
Thank you to liane.

00;52;59;22 - 00;53;09;07
Speaker 1
This is Kaga in Molalla, 88.3 FM.

00;53;09;10 - 00;53;57;19
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to Resilient Earth Radio, where we talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and wherever you get your podcasts. The music for this show is canceled by the Sea from international composer Eric Allman of the Sea Ranch in Sonoma County, California.