Working with our conservation partners and the Natural Resources Conservation Service we have recently rolled out a new program to help rice farmers to enhance their fields for wildlife—especially nesting waterbirds.
I was out the other day during a “hard day at the office” and had a great experience photographing one of the great beneficiaries of our new program—the American Avocet. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautiful shorebirds. This one was a particularly irritated mom or (coming from a single father as I am) dad making a lot of noise as I was snapping the pictures. I’m told by my birding expert friends that this is classic behavior they exhibit to try to scare or lure predators away from nests and/or their chicks in the area. In this case it was cute baby chicks they were concerned about that I also has the pleasure of seeing.
Here is my version of an “angry bird.”
I promise that this flustered Avocet went right back to the business of parenting right after I left the scene.
Up the road on that same day, Jim Morris, a co-worker of mine, was taking some extraordinary photographs of a different American Avocet nest with the mother or father in the background. Note the berm between the two flooded rice checks. This is a specially modified berm--done as part of our new program--to be flatter and wider specifically to accommodate more nesting by Avocets and other nesting birds.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say. And, here’s the living proof right here. Family rice farmers are utilizing conservation funding and changing the landscape in the Sacramento Valley to benefit waterbirds.
Paul Buttner is Environmental Affairs Manager for the California Rice Commission.
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