Getting Our Heads Above Water: Integrating Bird Conservation in Planning, Science, and Restoration for a More Resilient Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta

The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta is an important region for bird conservation in California, particularly as part of a large, productive estuary on the Pacific Flyway. The Delta currently provides habitat to an abundant, diverse community of birds, but it is likely only a small fraction of what the Delta’s bird community once was. Meeting the goal of restoring a healthy Delta ecosystem is legislatively required to include providing habitat for birds among the conservation goals and strategies in the Delta Plan, yet birds and their habitat needs are often not addressed in science syntheses, conservation planning, and large-scale restoration initiatives in the Delta. In this essay, the authors provide an avian perspective on the Delta, synthesizing recent scientific work to describe factors that contribute to the Delta’s current importance for birds, and the conservation needs of the diverse array of bird species that call the Delta home.

Migratory flight on the Pacific Flyway: strategies and tendencies of wind drift compensation

Applications of remote sensing data to monitor bird migration usher a new understanding of magnitude and extent of movements across entire flyways. Millions of birds move through the western USA, yet this region is understudied as a migratory corridor. Characterizing movements in the Pacific Flyway offers a unique opportunity to study complementary patterns to those recently highlighted in the Atlantic and Central Flyways. We use weather surveillance radar data from spring and autumn (1995–2018) to examine migrants' behaviours in relation to winds in the Pacific Flyway. Overall, spring migrants tended to drift on winds, but less so at northern latitudes and farther inland from the Pacific coastline. Relationships between winds and autumn flight behaviours were less striking, with no latitudinal or coastal dependencies. Differences in the preferred direction of movement (PDM) and wind direction predicted drift patterns during spring and autumn, with increased drift when wind direction and PDM differences were high. We also observed greater total flight activity through the Pacific Flyway during the spring when compared with the autumn. Such complex relationships among birds’ flight strategies, winds and seasonality highlight the variation within a migration system. Characterizations at these scales complement our understanding of strategies to clarify aerial animal movements.

Instinct Extinct: The Great Pacific Flyway

This article, or artist’s inquiry, was written in concert with the exhibition Instinct Extinct: The Great Pacific Flyway. Beginning with introductions to bird migration, the concept of global flyways and the history of conservation, the text considers the poetics of art-making relative to academic research. Areas of artistic exploration include a map depicting California’s changing waterscape, video portraits of people of the flyway and assemblages of invented and found avian artifacts. The article concludes with a review of current environmental conditions affecting migratory birds and some reflective passages.