Visiting Alcatraz? These dazzling birds are worth the price of admission ...Middle East

At the rocky edge of Alcatraz, a Brandt’s cormorant is committing a crime.

A cormorant neighbor just returned from a patch of nearby grass, where it plucked a mouthful of greens and waddled back to its mate to help build their nest. But the happy couple is about to make a mistake.

They turn their attention elsewhere, leaving their pile of vegetation unprotected just for a moment, and a crafty avian miscreant spots an opportunity.

Thief!

“It’s like watching a soap opera,” says Julie Thayer, a senior scientist at the Farallon Institute who has studied the birds of Alcatraz for almost 30 years.

Standing by the railing on the western edge of the island with the old cellhouse lurking on the hill behind you, it’s easy to forget about the island’s gloomy history and get lost in the wonder of the vibrant scene unfolding just below.

A colony of maybe a hundred Brandt’s cormorants is hustling about, and there’s a lot to keep track of. The birds are madly collecting nest material, stealing from one another, fighting a little, flapping their wings and displaying their best courtship maneuvers.

Tourists come here for the felonious tales, of course, but this may be the best place in the world to see the Brandt’s cormorant. The toddler-sized, 5-pound bird has a 4-foot wingspan, black feathers and a majestic, bright blue pouch that males show off proudly when trying to attract a mate. They shake their wings, open their mouths, tilt their heads back and boom, there it is — a pouch so blue it could have its own Crayola shade.

“We often have people from Britain coming here,” says Thayer. “They really want to see Brandt’s cormorant, because it doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

For birders, Alcatraz is an unusual environment. Seabirds often breed on land that’s not accessible to humans to observe. But there are no land predators on this island, so the birds don’t have to worry about exposing their nests.

The rocky shores, abandoned buildings and cozy structures provide plenty of space for birds who like to nest in large groups. And because the waters of San Francisco Bay are lush with marine life, there’s an abundance of nearby food for birds that feast on ocean creatures.

The result is magnificent, with cormorant and gull colonies spread out over the island, as if it were theirs alone. Snowy egrets and black-crowned night herons nest more discreetly in the bushes. Geese are everywhere. Sparrows and hummingbirds can be found, too. Ravens, of course. And until recently, there were a couple of peregrine falcons nesting on the island, but as of March, park rangers had gone months without spotting them, a particular concern, given the recent bird flu outbreak.

The National Parks Service, with help from scientists like those at the Farallon Institute, has been carefully protecting the island to ensure it remains a flourishing location for birds.

Imagine how many birds were there in the early 1800s, when Spanish explorers named the island after alcatraces or seabirds. Military takeover in the 1850s pushed the birds out, and for the next century, cannon fire and military activity made it an unwelcoming place for birds. Not even the famous “Birdman” prisoner, Robert Stroud, was allowed to have birds on the island.

The prisoners, however, were allowed to help tend the gardens and did such a good job introducing resilient plants that many continued to flourish years after the prison closed in 1963. Today, volunteers through the Alcatraz Historic Gardens Project keep the gardens blooming.

“It’s poignant to think about,” says local naturalist John Muir Laws. “Here you are in lockup for the rest of your life, but what you can do is nurture some growth and beauty back into the world. Next time you’re over there, explore those gardens and think about the impact that’d have on your humanity, if you’re incarcerated. Gardens are still active parts of many prisons and something inmates can do to be connected with the cycles of life that otherwise they’re not connected to.”

It’s the gardens and bushes along the western side of the island that have made fantastic homes for the egrets and herons.

They nearly went extinct in the early 1900s, when it was popular for women to wear plumes in their hats. Egrets returned to Alcatraz in 1997, though numbers have declined in recent years. There were only a few dozen snowy egret nests located last year.

Spotting them would be worth a visit all on its own. Their fluffy white feathers are often visible poking from the bushes. When their eggs hatch in May and June, the chicks will spend time around the nest and in surrounding trees, while the adult birds put on big, noisy displays as they feed them, sometimes just 10 feet from the walkway.

“Watching egrets breeding and feeding is so much fun,” says Muir Laws. “(On the mainland), they’re way off on distant eucalyptus trees somewhere you can’t see. But because there’s a wall at Alcatraz that everybody respects, you’ll be walking on the path and a couple meters away, there’s an egret on its nest right next to the trail.

“It reminds me of going to the Galapagos Islands. These are animals that know human beings stay over there, ‘We’ve got them fenced in — this is our island.’”

To ensure their safety, the park keeps parts of the island closed from February through September to protect the birds’ nesting areas.

Climate change is a battle, too.

Take the Brandt’s cormorants, for example. They were first spotted repopulating Alcatraz in the early 1990s with a handful of nests. Then the numbers exploded, reaching the thousands by 2009. Then they disappeared. There was an anchovy shortage, and they had to go elsewhere to find food.

“A shift in the ocean climate caused a shift in their prey,” Thayer said. “There was also a big marine heatwave in 2014-16. People were seeing a lot of dead birds, seals, sea lions washing up on beaches, just because the waters were so warm that the things they normally eat died or moved northwards.”

When the anchovy returned a few years later, so did the cormorants. And by 2023, there were almost 5,000 Brandt’s cormorant nests on Alcatraz.

Muir Laws says his favorite thing to do at the island is watch the “kleptomaniac cormorants” steal nest material from one another.

“If you look at the spacing of the nests, they’re all about two neck lengths away,” he said. “So if you lean over, you won’t be able to peck or steal stuff from your neighbor.”

That’s a general rule of bird behavior on the island: lose focus, lose your nest. Or your chicks.

Ravens and, since 2019, peregrine falcons are waiting for unprotected nest eggs or for baby gull chicks to hatch, as they become easy prey.

The gulls don’t seem too concerned; they’ve nested everywhere on the island, with almost 1,000 pairs spotted there last year. From the old officers’ quarters to the warden’s house near the parade grounds, the western gull has never looked more proud to make a home.

These birds can live to be as old as 30, though most live between 15 and 18 years.

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Lucky birders might also catch a glimpse of the great blue herons. There are only a few, and they can be found in the eucalyptus tree above the Alcatraz rose garden.

It may require binoculars, but the pigeon guillemots can be spotted nesting in pipes and nest boxes near the shores. The black birds blend in with the darkness of their cavernous homes, but their bright red feet and bright red throats are unmistakable. Sometimes, you’ll see them right when you get off the ferry.

It takes some effort, but chasing the birds at Alcatraz can reward you with cheery entertainment.

At “The Rock,” it’s the birds’ world — we’re just visiting it.

“Whenever I’m over there, I think of being incarcerated on that island,” Muir Laws says. “You may never fly again, but I wonder if the inmates looked out at the birds, if that could bring them comfort and hope.

“The birds can go in and out. And they chose to come there.”

Details: Take the ferry to Alcatraz ($48 for adults, $29 for children) as early as 8:20 a.m. returning as late as 6:35 p.m. through November; cityexperiences.com. See the “Birds of a Changing Climate” exhibit in the island’s New Industries Building, open from 3 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursday-Saturday and other times depending on staff availability; nps.gov.

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