The Ins and Outs and Ups and Downs Of Mendocino Coast Audubon’s Save Our Shorebirds Program

“Isn’t always easy and isn’t always simple, but it’s nearly always fun,” Becky Bowen says about Save Our Shorebirds. She will tell the story of the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society’s shorebird conservation program at the chapter program meeting at 7 p.m., October 19 on Zoom.

Save Our Shorebirds is an ongoing long-term Mendocino Coast Audubon citizen science program in cooperation with California State Parks. It grew out of a friendship between State Parks Environmental Scientist Angela Liebenberg and Becky in 2004. The two came up with the idea during long in-field surveys in MacKerricher State Park where Angela organized local Western Snowy Plover volunteers monitors. The Western Snow Plover is listed as threatened on the federal Endangered Species List. Local birding legend Dorothy Tobkin talked them into making the program about all shorebirds, since so many of them were listed as birds in decline by National Audubon and the American Bird Conservancy.

Angela now is a Senior Environmental Scientist at California Fish & Wildlife. Becky, a retired production manager at ABC-TV in Hollywood, now lives in Caspar and is the volunteer SOS data compiler and surveyor coordinator. “Running the SOS program is not that different than working on the Academy Awards telecast,” she says. “You plan it, budget it, put it on, and pay the bills-and always have a backup generator, and take good care of the crew and, oh yes, the stars.”

The stars of SOS are the shorebirds of MacKerricher State Park and the volunteers who have gathered data about the birds since June of 2007. Please tune in to see photographs, listen to the SOS story, and hear what the birds have been telling us for fourteen years.

Have questions about shorebirds? Send them to Becky at casparbeck@comcast.net If you miss the live Zoom presentation, look for a recording on YouTube.

To join our Zoom Meeting via desktop, laptop, tablet, or smart phone:
At 6:45 PM, click on the following LINK – We are requesting that you to click on the link 15 minutes prior to the start of the event, so that you can make sure that your audio and video are working properly.

If you cannot join by computer, tablet, or smart phone, you can dial the number below from any telephone and listen to the presentation: 1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) or 1 253-215-8782 US (Tacoma)
Meeting ID: 821 4315 2741
Passcode: 943782