09.20 Birds of Sonoma County - by Peter LaVeque, Ph.D.

On September 20, Peter LaVeque gave a fascinating talk to the Science Buzz Cafe crowd about the birds of Sonoma County. He told fascinating and intimate details about the creatures that seem almost unbelievable to those of us who are not so familiar with the private lives of the birds.

Peter said his fascination began while watching the water birds around his childhood home in Vallejo. After teaching for a full career, he seems to have slipped into another wherein he can indulge his whims as an ornithologist. His stories about birds that were perched on the edge of extinction but came back with the help of humans, the very species who had threatened them in the first place, included California Condors and pelicans.

However, perhaps the bird that got the most attention in the Cafe society was the Vaux Swift. Swift indeed, for this little bird, relative of the hummingbird and weighing a fraction of an ounce, flies at 100 miles per hour for 900 miles at a stretch in migration. Peter estimates 6000 of them are currently occupying a chimney in Healdsburg. Since they subsist on insects, we owe them a debt of gratitude that we are not neck-deep in bugs.

Peter LaVeque at Science Buzz Cafe on September 20th, 2007