The Bird’s Eye View started out when Judy Scheible, the editor of the Viewpoint, a monthly community newspaper published by the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association in Sacramento, California, found two unsolicited articles about birds in her in-box.  Viewpoint announces activities at the Community Center including all  events, plays and concerts at the theater, reports on neighborhood matters, features personality profiles, the local pre-school group, schools, neighborhood businesses, civic meetings and special fundraising and social events. It has a circulation of 3,000.

Curtis Park is an older, densely settled neighborhood with mixed-use and single family homes built from 1910 to 1935. It was developed out of Northern California Central Valley Oak forest and pastureland not far from the banks of the Sacramento River.

One of the articles was written by Bob Purcell, an amateur birder new to the neighborhood, who wrote about his excitement in seeing a Northern Flicker and a Townsend Warbler in his front yard on the same day. The second was a more scientific piece submitted by Dan Airola, an ornithologist and environmental consultant. Dan’s article was about one of the areas of his interest and expertise, the few remaining nesting pairs of Purple Martins in Central California returning to the neighborhood to nest in a railway overpass.

Carol Blackman, the production editor, suggested that the two collaborate on articles about birds in the neighborhood, and that the Viewpoint would carry a monthly 500-word column with photos. She named it the The Bird’s Eye View. Only later did she discover this was the same title that Roger Tory Peterson used in his monthly Audubon columns. Hardly aspiring to that lofty perch, nearly two years and 16 editions later, the column has described the appearance, diet, habitat, seasonal occurrence and behavior of about 50 different birds living in or migrating over the Sierra Curtis neighborhood. 

The Bird’s Eye View has covered year-round residents, including the Western Scrub Jay, Robin, Crow, Mourning Dove, and Mockingbird, residential pests like the European Starling and the House Sparrow, birds of prey, resident and migrating hummingbirds, migratory songbirds, swallows, and, of course, the Purple Martin. One story covered the bugling Sandhill Cranes and barking Snow Geese and Tundra Swans that can be heard flying back and forth to the rice fields during the winter nights. There was even a Halloween column about the spooky Turkey Vulture roost that attracts 500 vultures every night during peak migration in late October.