Before Alcatraz was home to famous prisoners, including the Birdman, the island harbored generations of fowl. When Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala mapped the San Francisco Bay in 1775, he named the island “La Isla de los Alcatraces,” which translates roughly to “Island of the Seabirds.”
Alcatraz was later developed as a military fortress. In the 1850s, the U.S. Army dynamited the perimeter and formed its distinct jagged cliffs, a transformation that prompted a mass exodus of seabirds that would last more than 100 years. When the federal penitentiary closed in 1963, the birds began to return en masse, and today the island is home to more than 5,000 nesting birds. Among them are pigeon guillemots, which were thrilled to find a rich vein of drain pipes and crevices along the perimeter, courtesy of the dynamite from 100 years prior.
In the 1990s, Point Blue arrived at Alcatraz to study the seabirds, introducing the wooden boxes to monitor the pigeon guillemots’ nesting habits as they continue to evolve on an island forever changed by mankind.
Last week, D’Amico secured about $4,700 in funding to start production of the first 10 ceramic nests, which will be installed before March, when the pigeon guillemots make their way back to the island to breed as a part of their annual migration from British Columbia and Alaska.