2004 North American Bluebird Society Convention
July 7-11, 2004
Ithaca, NY
The 2004 convention of the North American Bluebird Society will be held July 7-11 at Ithaca New York. The 27th annual convention is truly an international one - registrations are arriving daily from three dozen states and provinces. Come and learn how the wonderful summers offset the long winters in Central New York. The welcome mat is out.
Quick Takes: Save - Registration will be limited to 350; Register at the Clarion Hotel by June 1 for the $79 guest room rate; Add to the fun - bring a donation for the Silent Auction.
The Clarion University Hotel and Conference Center offers the amenities of a busy college town. Within minutes of a variety of restaurants and varied shopping opportunities, museums, parks and summer recreation, the convention venue offers something for everyone.
Summer in the Finger Lakes of upstate New York - a time of rejoicing! Fifteen feet of snow is gone from Syracuse. Swimmers, boaters, and fisherman have moved to the lakes - a dozen of them an hour or two away. Parks along the lakes claim those interested in picnics, sunbathing, fishing from shore or loafing in general.
The foremost attraction may be the new Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology at Sapsucker Woods, just a couple miles from the convention hotel. The startling, new thirty million-dollar headquarters will bring all of us into the 21st century of ornithology. Its library with study carrels, the view over Sapsucker Woods pond, its interactive exhibits, and the world famous collection of natural sounds, are just the beginning of the pleasure that awaits visitors to this biological Mecca.
Pat Gowaty will kick off the Saturday program at the NABS Convention. If it weren't so before, the feature article Jim Williams wrote in the Summer 2003 Bluebird, made her a favorite among bluebird enthusiasts. Early in her professional career, Pat chose bluebirds as the subjects for research to better understand the social behavior of a species. She admits, "I was naïve when I began 30 years ago. I didn't realize how easy it was going to be to study them. I discovered that bluebirds spontaneously generate at the site of nest boxes! If I put nest boxes in places that I thought the birds would like, I had tons of birds. These bids turned out to be extraordinarily easy to study."
She believes bluebirds to be a model species for behavioral studies. Research funding from National Institutes of Health (NIH) has continued for many years. Such funding is awarded "the applicability of the research to human health concerns". She continues, "I have watched bluebirds because they are extraordinarily aesthetically pleasing. I study an organism that pleases me every day. I really like bluebirds."
Field trips include such popular destinations as Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Frederick Remington Museum of Western Culture, Finger Lakes National Forest, National Warplane Museum, and the Finger Lakes Wine Region. Information for self-guided trips to Cooperstown - Baseball Hall of Fame and Farmers Museum, to Lake Ontario, and the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River, Adirondack lakes and parks, and many other vacation venues will be available.
The banquet speaker, Dr. Charles R. Smith, an authority on grassland birds, was once a student of Lawrence Zeleny, He is based in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University and will speak about the conservation of farmland birds. Since 1992, Dr. Smith has coordinated the New York State Gap Analysis Project, in cooperation with multiple state and federal agencies. His research focuses upon biodiversity conservation and questions related to conservation of grassland birds and responses of northeastern breeding bird populations to habitat change and fragmentation.
Other speakers include Keith Kridler from Texas, and John Rogers, Central New York naturalist and popular speaker. Kevin McGowan led prominent research that revealed the family life of the American Crow. Ray Briggs, founder and first president of the Schoharie County NY Bluebird Society, retired Vo-Ag teacher and cattle judge, will tickle your funny bone with his nestbox monitoring slide show. Entertainment will be provided by The Fly Creek Philharmonic, a group made famous on the radio classic, A Prairie Home Companion.
For more information about the July NABS convention, go to the NYSBS website at http://www.nysbs.com, read the NABS Bluebird, or contact David Smith by phone at 607-844-9167 or email at klip@clarityconnect.com.
