A NOTE FROM OUR TEAM

REGISTERING SITES

Although there are only two weeks left in data collection this year, your surveys are just as important as they were in mid-summer. Last week’s late-season fires in southern California served as a reminder that the fire season extends into November this far south, and we aim to capture as many smoke events as possible. Every survey you conduct helps us document bird observations before, during, and after smoke impacts in our study area and link changes in avian behavior and species distribution to smoke pollution. Our goal is to document the places and resources birds use when it is smoky. To do this, we also need to know a bit more about the sites where you’ve been conducting your surveys. If you haven’t done so yet, please register your site (or sites!) using this form. That will let us know what kinds of resources birds have access to when they visit your monitoring sites and help us better understand their behavior.

BIRD OF THE WEEK: American Kestrel

The American Kestrel is the smallest falcon in North America. On many of our bird walks, we have observed these kestrels suspended in midair, presumably hunting for prey. However, these raptors don’t only reside in Los Angeles; in fact, they are found throughout the continental United States and many parts of South America. Like most raptors, the males are smaller than the females, but are still more colorful. Male American Kestrels have rust-colored backs and white underbellies, with slate-blue heads and wings. Their rusty tails feature a black band with white tips at its end. Females are rust-colored all over, except for their white underbellies, and feature black banding throughout their upperparts and tail. Both sexes have two prominent black stripes on either side of their face, while most falcons only have one. American Kestrels also have two black markings on the back of their head known as ocelli. From a distance,  these markings look like a set of eyes and act to deter predators. The American Kestrel can be preyed upon by larger birds like Cooper’s Hawks, Red-tailed Hawks, American Crows, and American Barn Owls. 

American Kestrels hunt for small animals like insects, rodents, reptiles, and small songbirds. They tend to favor open areas with few trees and sparse vegetation, despite the fact that they nest in cavities. Unable to create cavities of their own to nest in, kestrels rely on old woodpecker holes, natural cavities in trees, or cavities in rocks or manmade structures. American Kestrels will also compete with other cavity nesters, like Northern Flickers or squirrels, and attempt to chase them away from potential nests. They do not use nesting materials to build nests within this cavity, and simply hollow out a shallow depression if the floor of the cavity is soft.

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FEATURED STORY: Fire Management & Cultural Burning

Fire has shaped ecosystems around the world for thousands of years. Here on the West Coast, fire ignites the next generation of chaparral and grasslands, clears debris from forest floors, and reinfuses our soils with new nutrients. Fire is an important part of the ecology of the West Coast, but in recent years, catastrophic megafires have changed our perceptions of fire into something wholly negative and destructive. But, it wasn’t always like this. Long before the age of megafires, wildfires were managed by the original caretakers of the land. Fire management has been occurring along the West Coast of the United States since the first inhabitants of the land arrived tens of thousands of years ago. 

If you could go back in time to California before modern fire management practices, the landscapes you would encounter would look very different than they do today. For example, the Klamath Mountain region’s biomass used to be half of what it is now, and tree density in the Sierra Nevadas has increased over 6-fold in the past century alone. Recent studies, oral Indigenous history, and ecological knowledge from the Karuk and Yurok tribes show that Indigenous peoples' management of these forests for centuries helped to support biodiversity and cultivate resources, even during changing climate periods.

As we mitigate and adapt to more extreme fires, fire management is more important now than ever. Using cultural burning techniques, Indigenous peoples were able to clear trails, grow food, conduct ceremonial practices, and manage the ecosystems of their ancestral lands. In 1850, the state of California banned cultural burning in an effort to displace Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and prevent them from practicing their culture. Without their careful management, our forests have increased in density, with some fire-prone trees like the Douglas Fir increasing in large quantities, making these ecosystems more vulnerable to wildfires than before. 

A recent California bill seeks to change this and affirm Indigenous Peoples’ right to practice cultural burning as an effort to reduce wildfires across the state. The bill will streamline approval for cultural burns, encouraging greater autonomy for indigenous groups conducting the burns. Creating more opportunities for cultural burning will help safeguard treasured landscapes and protect habitats birds need to thrive.

Thank you to all our partners and supporting organizations!

Project Phoenix is grateful to our partners and all the supporting organizations who help our program soar. Visit our partners page to learn more about the incredible work of these non-profit organizations – from science to conservation to outdoor recreation, these orgs are dedicated to protecting our environment for people and the birds we love.