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Please type your questions in the form below in relation to my Consulting Biologist field survey, regulatory, and permitting services# that I have conducted since 1998, then click on the “Submit” button — or click here for information about my Birding Tours that I have led for 25+ years as a Birding Guide, per how GuidedBirding.com features me.  

Contact me now by clicking here or learn more about my services at my full web site — WarblerWatch.com — by clicking here.   

(# = Details of my diverse roles are noted below, including submitting (for example) Biological Assessments as follow-up to field surveys for common and rare, special-status plant and wildlife species.)

(Note: As common courtesy, the above masked photo may still be an option you wish me to employ for your birding tour? If so, please let me know. I’m flexible. To learn more about how I am glad to address your COVID concerns during a tour, please feel to contact me by clicking here.)

At WarblerWatch.com, you can click on my resume to read about my environmental consulting experience as a long-time Certified Wildlife Biologist Asc.  You’ll also learn that my clients include landowners, environmental consulting firms, tree companies* (* = I am a recommended Consulting Avian Biologist at Tree Care For Birds), engineering firms, planning departments, sanitary districts, cannabis growers, vineyard owners, law firms (as an expert witness), and neighborhood groups — all of which hire me as a freelance consultant to assist with a) field surveys (nesting bird surveys; nest searches; presence-absence surveys for common and rare, special-status birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles); b) pre-construction surveys; c) habitat restoration (including flood control restoration management plans) to address erosion problems in watercourse, creeks, rivers, and riparian areas after heavy rain events d) tree removal surveys (to ensure bird protection for nesting birds); and e) regulatory/permitting services related to local, state, and federal regulatory measures. 

Post survey, my follow-up regulatory compliance reports {e.g., biological assessment studies, initial study reports, “biological resources” chapters for Environmental Impact Reports (EIR) } are submitted to owners, stakeholders, local planning departments, and state and federal government agencies (e.g., US Fish & Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish & Wildlife, US Army Corps of Engineers, Regional Water Quality Control Board, among others).                                                                            

For example, a typical bird survey I conduct occurs to ensure a client complies with applicable local, state, and federal measures related to the protection of rare and common nesting bird species, such as Ridgway’s Rail (for which I possess a federal survey permit, along with my other federal survey permits for California Tiger Salamander and California Red-legged Frog).

Ridgway’s Rail (federally and CA state endangered species that breeds amid San Francisco Bay brackish and saltmarsh habitat. (Photo credit: Becky Matsubara)

My birding tours and Birding Guide role for the last 25 years include San Francisco Bay Area birding tours, California bird watching tours, and San Francisco birding tours as a California birding guide, San Francisco birding guide, Marin County birding guide, and Sonoma County birding guide.

Click here to read details about my Birding Tours that also notes cost options. (You can also click here to email or call me.) 

Professional biologists wishing to learn more birding knowledge have also hired me for classes*/tours, with teaching beginners and advanced birders an ongoing niche.  (* = For example, my upcoming and annual week-long June 2026 Birding By Ear In The Sierra Nevada Mountains of California is coordinated by and hosted at the San Francisco State University overnight field station…Please feel free to check back here by January, 2026 for the exact June class dates in 2026.)

Another popular public presentation and field trip is my “Vagrancy In Birds” class, which is accessed via clicking Adult Classes/Public Programs here.

Or please feel free to view a 2024 recorded, archived presentation of this topic that I shared with Marin Audubon Society members by clicking on the previous line’s hot text:  Marin Audubon Society. You can also watch at the same web site a recent, archived “Warblers of Marin County & Where To Find Them” presentation that attracted nearly 100 viewers.  

As for guiding you on a birding outing, perhaps you’d like to visit the best, Prime Time birding hotspots in northern or central California? If so, here are two of the finest options in the San Francisco Bay Area: 1) Sonoma County, where I regularly lead Sonoma County birding tours to see Bodega Bay birds; and 2) Point Reyes National Seashore where more than 490 bird species have been detected, including dozens of vagrant species at several birding hotspots that I’d be pleased to share with you on a birding tour.

My WarblerWatch web site also features a link to my blog in relation to college-level birding classes I periodically taught since 2003 as an Adjunct Faculty member at Merritt College (Oakland, CA), including Fundamentals of Ornithology and  Bird Song Ecology & Identifying Birds by Ear* college classes.

(* = This class theme continues to be one of my most “in-demand” offerings among several other diverse classes that I teach  (e.g.,  Raptors of the San Francisco Bay Area and Waterbirds of the San Francisco Bay Area, among others — as well as private and group tours for individuals or tour companies that hire me, such as Road Scholar).

For more details available; please feel free to write me at DanielEdelstein@att.net

In addition, please click on my web site’s Birding Links section where a “pull down” menu hosts several informative birding articles, as well as my “Nature Watch Phenology Calendar.” It features recurring land and sky events corresponding by month to natural phenomena specific to central and northern California. There’s also a 200 bird song species’ Bird Song Memory Phrases (or Bird Song Mnemonic) list at the Birding Links section to enjoy, if you’re wondering how to identify bird songs by ear and identify bird calls by ear. 

Click here if you wish to see an archived recording of my recent 2021 “Zoom” presentation titled “Discovering Wood-warblers of Marin County,” that was the highest ever viewed Speaker Series program hosted by the Marin Audubon Society (96 people watched). 

On the left, a 2025 photo of me at a recent American Ornithological Society (AOS) annual conference where I presented a topic related to the Breeding Bird Survey (that I have conducted for 27 years) — while the bottom presentation photo from a 2019 AOS annual meeting focuses the successful results of my Canada Goose management actions since 2010 at a site where addling goose eggs and authoring an Integrated Goose Management Plan have successfully reduced an overpopulation of this invasive species.

My upcoming August, 2026 American Ornithological Society presentation at its annual meeting in St. Louis is titled Evaluating the Bias of the North American Breeding Bird Survey Due to it Restricting Surveys to Roads

In addition, please feel free to click on the following link immediately BELOW to read my research report that I produced for the Sonoma Land Trust, based on my ongoing coordination of avian point count surveys at the Sears Point Restoration Area (SPRA) in the North Bay of San Francisco Bay: SPRA Avian Monitoring Report 

Lastly: Increasing Consulting Biologist roles I perform include a) assisting clients that hire me due to flooding events in N. California that require my experience in creating habitat and plant restoration plans for watercourses, streambeds, and riparian areas impacted by high water flood events and storm damage. In turn, my restoration plans allow clients to obtain permits from local planning departments to rehabilitate their damaged habitats. b) helping landowners benefit financially from a new California SB9 state law that allows them to divide their parcel into two or more legal parcels after I conduct a survey and submit a followup compliance report.

{* = I possess a federal 10(a)(1)(A) permit (#TE-101743-5) that is valid through March 31, 2029 to conduct field surveys for the following state of California and federal rare, listed species: Ridgway’s Rail (formerly California Clapper Rail), California Tiger Salamander, and California Red-legged Frog.}

(NOTE: I value your privacy, so your email address will never be shared or sold, I promise.)