Not so. Despite 150 years of development in the city, hundreds of species come here - most of them to the spots they inhabited before the Gold Rush.

Birders in San Francisco over the past century have compiled a list of 396 species, nearly half the birds in North America.

San Francisco is so feathered that it placed second in the America's Birdiest City contest with 178 species counted on one weekend - behind Dauphin Island, Ala., a town on a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico that is the site of five bird sanctuaries.

What makes the city's 49 square miles such a paradise for birds is its position on the Pacific Flyway, a major migratory route. Traveling birds rest and feed here, and the Mediterranean climate is welcoming to the residents who stay year round.

The assortment of ecosystems - bluffs and beaches, saltwater tidal marsh, mudflats and fresh creeks - provide haven habitat for waterfowl, seabirds, shorebirds and song birds.

"People were really surprised that there was that much diversity here," said David Armstrong, a birder from the Miraloma Park neighborhood on the south side of Mount Davidson who organized the event that won feathery fame for the city.

"For a highly urbanized area, 178 species, that's not bad," he said. "When you talk to people birding in the city, they're surprised there are more than pigeons and seagulls."

San Francisco's total was topped only by the 210 species found on Dauphin Island in the 2007 contest among coastal cities of roughly the same geographic size.

Swashbuckling veterans of binocular and bird-book wars - San Francisco residents Alan Hopkins, Paul Saraceni, Hugh Cotter and Josiah Clark - made up one of the dozen teams in the Birdiest City competition.

They were on another quest, too, competing for San Francisco's Big Day trophy. They spotted 149 species in 24 hours and now hold a model of Dashiell Hammett's notorious Maltese Falcon bestowed by the San Francisco Field Ornithologists group.

"It's power birding," said Clark, a consulting ecologist who since he was a teenager has filled his yard in the Richmond District with plants that birds like.

Birding is "almost like a meditation," he said. "You're raising your senses of observations. You want to be listening to the forest, to the scrubs, hillsides and willows. You want to visit everything that nature has become or was."

The Big Day winners provided The Chronicle with their list of the best birding spots in the city. Here they are:

The Presidio

along Lobos Creek and at Crissy Field

Birds: western bluebird, great horned owl, white-crowned sparrow, barn owl.

Search for western screech owl at Inspiration Point before dawn.

Lake Merced

Birds: ring-necked duck, California towhee, cliff swallow, red-winged blackbird, brown-headed cowbird, Eurasian collared dove, common yellowthroat, great egret, sora, Virginia rail, common moorhen

Ocean Beach

near Sloat Boulevard

Birds: sanderling, marbled godwit, whimbrel, white-winged scoter, Clark's grebe, red-necked phalarope, Caspian tern, California brown pelican. Brandt's cormorant, double-crested cormorant, pelagic cormorant and five species of gulls - western, glaucous-winged, California, Heermann's, Thayer's

Golden Gate Park

at the Chain of Lakes and Strybing Arboretum

Birds: white-throated sparrow, hooded merganser, gadwall, chestnut-backed chickadee, hairy woodpecker, violet-green swallow, tree swallow, Wilson's warbler, California quail

John McLaren Park

Birds: lesser goldfinch, purple finch, sharp-shinned hawk, Pacific-slope flycatcher

Candlestick Point

Birds: common goldeneye, lesser scaup, red-breasted merganser, Savannah sparrow

Hunters Point

Heron's Head Park

Birds: greater yellowlegs, long-billed curlew, short-billed dowitcher, American avocet, black-necked stilt

Mount Davidson

Birds: short-eared owl, Anna's hummingbird

Cliff House

Lands End and Golden Gate channel

Birds: Cooper's hawk, oystercatcher, black turnstone, surfbird

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle