His Career Is for the Birds, Most Fortunately for Them

Robb Hamilton hears the raspy-throated screech of a baby scrub jay and jumps out of his chair.

The 32-year-old birder and field biologist lives off a dirt and gravel road in a small cabin nestled in an oak-filled forest in Trabuco Canyon. But the anxious cries of the little bird are coming from his bathroom, which he has converted into a temporary sanctuary for the homeless fledgling.

It’s mealtime.

Hamilton is rearing the month-old bird on mealworms and elderberries.

“The idea is to not make him into a pet. I let him out yesterday afternoon and he flew up in the tree and didn’t want to come down. Early this morning, I was putting the worms out for him and this Cooper’s hawk flew in and it almost hit him. He jumped into the bushes and then he flew over to me and the Cooper’s hawk went right for him. I had to wave the hawk away.

“A neighbor found him on the Fourth of July. He’d fallen out of his nest. I tried to discourage the person from giving him to me, but he said, ‘Well, he’ll just die then.’ So I took him.”

Hamilton does not like to see birds in captivity and plans to return the baby scrub jay to the wild as soon as possible. For the last 17 years, he has been communing with birds in their natural habitat, an avocation that led to the writing of “The Birds of Orange County,” published last December by the county’s Sea & Sage chapter of the Audubon Society.

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The book lists the frequency of birds seen in Orange County for each month of the year and their locations. As an independent consulting biologist who also spent six years with the Irvine environmental consulting firm LSA Associates, Hamilton has earned his living by keeping track of threatened and endangered birds. He also has helped create environmental mitigation plans to offset damage caused by numerous county projects, including the San Joaquin Hills toll road.

“About 20 acres of restoration is needed because there are a lot of stream bed crossings where this massive road goes through. It will take about five years of monitoring and maintenance to keep the weeds down and allow the native plants to become established, and also to see how wildlife is responding.”

Hamilton is on the technical advisory committee for the Natural Community Conservation Planning program, a model plan being used throughout Orange County to balance the concerns of environmentalists and developers. The NCCP was born, in part, out of the furor raised over the California gnatcatcher, Hamilton said. The rare songbird lives in coastal sage scrub, found on some of the county’s most valuable real estate.

“The trend was to basically pave over all the hills where coastal sage scrub was growing,” Hamilton said. “It was the land that the developers were most interested in.

“In 1989, I remember a small development near Santiago Landfill where they were taking out an acre of coastal sage scrub. I recommended that they mitigate by replacing that acreage in some degraded area. I didn’t know very much about gnatcatchers at that time. It was just one bird on a long list of species that we were concerned about.”

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The gnatcatchers are surviving, Hamilton said, and their numbers are expected to increase in the wilderness areas created and protected under the plan.

“It’s not a dire situation for the gnatcatcher. They should do fine with these reserves that have been set up. Endangered, not threatened, seems to be the best term for them.

“But the California least terns out on the beaches here in Southern California are an endangered species. In order to keep these populations viable, they have to be very intensively managed. That’s just one of the classic endangered species that’s just going to need tender loving care for the rest of eternity, or it’s going to go extinct.”

Though debate continues over provisions of the NCCP, Hamilton expects the plan to survive as the framework for county development.

“It’s a done deal with the NCCP,” he said. “The developers have got their boundaries of where they can and can’t build. There’s going to be some big, nice habitat reserves, such as the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Limestone Canyon Regional Park and Whiting Ranch Regional Park.

“Some of these big chunks of habitat will be preserved, and most of the rest of undeveloped Orange County is going to be your typical condos and big boxes on little lots.

“I would certainly prefer that there were no toll roads, that there were no huge developments that take up entire canyons. We have degraded a lot of areas and will continue to as the county gets an even denser population. There will always be plenty of work to be done in Orange County to protect the environment.”

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Profile: Robb Hamilton

Age: 32

Hometown: Goleta

Residence: Trabuco Canyon

Family: Single

Education: Bachelor’s degree in biological science from UC Irvine

Background: Consulting biologist for two years on projects including the Port of Long Beach Naval Shipyard conversion; project manager and biologist in the Irvine office of LSA Associates for six years, conducting field work for environmental studies and habitat mitigation for projects including the south Orange County water supply pipeline; the Newport Coast development and the San Joaquin Hills toll road; member of the Technical Advisory Committee for the Natural Community Conservation Planning Program; birder for 17 years and co-author of “Birds of Orange County,” published in December by the county’s Sea & Sage chapter of the National Audubon Society; editorial contributor to Birding Magazine; conservation chairman, Orange County chapter of the California Native Plant Society

On protecting birds: “Everyone has to do their little piece of what it takes to keep our society going. The fireman puts out fires, the policeman arrests criminals. I can’t put out a fire or arrest a criminal, but I know about these birds and my job is to let people know when a species is in trouble.”

Source: Robb Hamilton; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times