I was walking at sunrise in February on the Crissy Field beach here in San Francisco which is located on the bay side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Crissy Field was a former Army base that was restored to its natural state in the 1990's so while it is now part of the Golden Gate National Park system it is still a very urban space.  At around 7:30am I saw several seagulls on the beach ahead of me and there, rolling in the surf was this poor bird.  The gulls were waiting for it to die.  It was still very frisky, snapping its long beak at anything that got close so I picked it up very gently noticing that one of its legs appeared to be snapped off and was hanging by the skin.  I carried it to a building just yards away that housed a museum and several offices that were not open yet, however it did not take long for someone to come and let me in.  It turned out that the staff in one of the offices had been trained in bird rescue from last year's oil spill in the Bay so we put the Grebe into a pet carrier and she said she would get someone to drive it to "WildCare" a wild animal rescue center about 30 minutes north of San Francisco.  I found the second Grebe four days later just a few feet away from where I found the first bird, when I came back from my car with a towel two Park Rangers were there and helped me catch it and I was able to take it to the same office as the first one.  I do not know what happened to either bird but I know that helping them made me very grateful that I could and that there are so many organizations that are there to help too!

This past Friday I went to Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands to paint with my watercolors and I found several dead birds scattered on about a quarter mile of the beach.  They looked like they came in with the last high tide.  I took pictures of them and counted 16 altogether, one I identified as a grebe by its black legs and white underbelly.  The rest were all the same, black and most looked newly dead, I could not tell what kind of cormorants they were.   I have also sent one of the dead grebe.  As I was leaving I noticed Park Rangers examining them so I am hoping that they are able to figure out why the birds died and how to prevent more bird deaths on our beaches.