Motherhood and Nesting Exploration Bird Walk with Lisa Hug

Spring is a lively time at the Laguna de Santa Rosa with blooming flowers, increasing daylight and birds singing to signal breeding and nesting season. What better way to celebrate Mother’s Day weekend than to watch the entertaining Double-crested Cormorants perform their parenting duties? We will look and listen for other birds, including colorful orioles and grosbeaks, on the way to the rookery, where we will spend some extra time observing the cormorants nesting behavior. This driving and walking tour with local birder and naturalist Lisa Hug will start at the Laguna Environmental Center (LEC) before carpooling out to Delta Pond, an area that is ordinarily closed to the public. At the end, we will return to the LEC to enjoy our packed lunches and create a list of birds encountered throughout the day.

Lisa Hug originally came to California from the Midwest in 1986. She was very involved with Point Reyes Bird Observatory and eventually became a contract biologist and freelance naturalist in the mid-1990s. She has been teaching for the College of Marin, Petaluma Adult School and Point Reyes Field Institute for over a decade. She was president of Redwood Region Ornithological Society for two years and received the Martha Bentley and Ernestine Smith Award for the Dedication to Wildlife Conservation Education in 2009. She was regional coordinator for the Sonoma County Breeding Bird Atlas and is currently one of the Sonoma County Reviewers for ebird.org . She is the editor for the Birds Checklist for the Laguna de Santa Rosa which can be bought through the Laguna Foundation Store.