Three Rivers Birding Club
Bi-monthly Membership Meeting
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
6:30 - 9:30 PM
Phipps Garden Center, Shady Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA
Fifty-eight members and visitors were in attendance. After a social hour filled with telling recent birding stories, munching treats provided by a few members, and selecting from the large collection of free birding materials, the newly elected president, Jim Valimont, called the meeting to order at 7:30 PM.
Jim announced that David Liebmann, who had earlier presented a program on birds and poetry to 3RBC, has an article in the ABA's most recent Birding journal entitled "Searching for the Muse: A Survey of American Bird Poetry, 1659-2008". Jim also commended Pat and Sherron Lynch for their work with the recent PSO meeting. He then recognized six people attending their first 3RBC meeting.
Our newly elected vice president, Bob VanNewkirk, took charge of the business agenda. Bob reminded members of Dudley Edmondson's lecture and panel discussion concerning the lack of minority involvement in birding to be held at 7 PM on October 8 in the Carnegie Lecture Hall in Oakland. Dudley is a famous nature photographer.
Kate St. John, our Peregrine Falcon expert, expressed her concern about bird window kills and suggested ways for club members to help alleviate the problem. Kate stated that collisions with windows result in a billion bird deaths a year in North America. One of Pittsburgh's own Peregrine Falcons died in June of a broken neck. Humans are also interfering with bird migration by installing bright lights on tall structures that could create a fatal attraction for the birds. UPMC recently installed a bright sign on the top of the USX building. The Fatal Light Program in Toronto created public awareness of the hazards of bright lights to migrating birds and resulted in the city toning down lights during migration. Kate asked for volunteers to monitor the plaza of the USX tower for dead birds to ascertain if the new lighting is having a negative impact. For more details on how to help, contact Kate at her blog address, www.wqed.org/birdblog. She also recommended that 3RBC invite Dr. Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College to speak concerning the issue of avian mortality from collisions with man-made structures.
Neil Nodelman, Program Director, reported that our next two speakers will be Bill Thompson, III, the editor of Bird Watcher's Digest, on October 1, and Larry Barth, the renowned, prize-winning wood carver, on December 3.
Steve Thomas, Outings Director, provided a quick summary of the many outings scheduled for this fall. Patty Kaminski will lead one at a new location in Greene County. For more details on all the outings, visit the club's website, www.3rbc.org, or check the latest The Peregrine newsletter.
Jack Solomon conducted the door prize drawing which featured two copies of the new Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America, written by Ted Floyd and edited by Paul Hess, both 3RBC club members.
Bird Reports Editor Mike Fialkovich commented on the conclusion of the final year of the Breeding Bird Atlas survey and enumerated some noteworthy local bird sightings since early June. These included the following: a late Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and a late Ruddy Duck, a Great Egret, the hybrid Great Egret x Great Blue Heron in Allegheny County, 2 Black Vultures, a Wilson's Phalarope, 3 Fish Crows, and 2 Summer Tanagers at Frick Park. Larry Helgerman reported that a very large flock of Purple Martins is congregating at Presque Isle before migrating south.
Neil introduced our speaker for the evening, Sheila Thorpe, a club member who now lives in Cleveland. Her topic was "Birding the Cloud Forest of Ecuador". Sheila's favorite yard bird is the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, and she greatly enjoyed seeing 12 other hummingbird species in Arizona in 2001. Sheila eagerly joined 7 other birders plus naturalists and guides on a birding tour to Ecuador organized by Tim Krynak, a Cleveland naturalist who taught her about the Ecuador/Ohio migration connection. The main attraction, of course, was the 131 hummingbird species in the country.
Sheila used a PowerPoint presentation to enthusiastically lead the audience through lush mountain forests and the dry, scrubby Inter-Andean Valley; along muddy roads where pigs enjoyed soaking in the puddles; up and down steps cut into hillsides with machetes; across fabulous vistas from one mountain to the next; into bird sanctuaries, an orchid reserve, and a huge marketplace. All the while, she shared the sights, sounds, and smells of a multitude of birds, insects, flowers, tarantulas, frogs, foods, people, and scenery.
Highlights of the still photos were, of course, the many hummingbirds decked out in their brilliant colors and lengthy bills. A few computer experts were able to iron out a glitch between Sheila's computer and the projector, and several videos wowed the audience. After watching short videos of hummingbirds at syrup feeders, toucans and tanagers in the trees and eating bananas at feeders, and antpittas eating worms being tossed to them on the forest floor, a member of the audience said, "This is like birding!" However, stories about tarantulas and parasitic tarantula wasps had some arachnophobes rethinking their plans to get right on a plane to Quito.
Of the 500 avian species available in the region, Sheila tallied 258 species, most of them new to her life list. She aptly summarized her adventure with the statement, "Is nature amazing or what?"
Submitted by Pat and Sherron Lynch
Co-secretaries of Three Rivers Birding Club
