Nothing brings a group together like humor. Upon popular demand the Unusual Bird Sightings presentation has been reproduced. Any resemblance to actual persons is strictly accidental. No birds were harmed in the making of this presentation; I don’t know about the people.
If you don’t see your likeness here; it is only a matter of time before the club president immortalizes your image.
Please join us for a fun evening of food, fellowship, and silent auction, Thursday evening, September 6 at the Lodge at Oakwood Trails. We’ll eat about 6:30 but come early if you’d like to bird the area. We’re going casual again this year; bring your own food (sandwiches was the norm last year). Drinks, dessert and homemade ice cream will be provided. Please bring an item (or several) for our auction. After we eat we’ll bid on these items as a way to raise funds for our bird blind. Some items already donated include:
And the list keeps growing. Check the website to see pictures of these items; come back often to see updates. Yes, we’ll elect officers, give out a few awards, and have a short program if time allows. Hope to see you there!
Big Country Audubon’s annual Spring Social at Cedar Gap Farm, 6 p.m. Please join us for a fun evening of food, birds, and birders! BCAS will provide the brisket and drinks; all you need to add is two side dishes such as vegetable, salad, bread or dessert. No program; we’re watching the birds. The Painted Buntings are here and two Lazuli Buntings were reported last week. This is a great event to bring the non birding spouse or beginning birders. See you there!
Field trip to Walnut Creek Ranch, west of Lake Spence. Bird banders Ross Dawkins and Delbert Tarter of San Angelo will be present and banding birds. You will be able to see the birds up close and personal, in the hand and perhaps even in your hand. After observing the banding, we will tour the ranch and look for breeding Scott’s Oriole, Black-capped Vireo, Vermilion Flycatcher, and others. For those wishing to drive down on Friday evening, rooms are available at the ranch for $25 per person. Please call the hotline (325-691-8981) and leave us a message if you want a room. We will contact you with further instructions. If you prefer to drive down on Saturday morning, you’ll need to leave about 5:30 a.m. from Abilene to get to Walnut Creek Ranch in time to see the banding which will take place at sunup. The day fee is $5 per person.
What to bring: the usual birding gear such as binoculars, sunscreen, hat, water, snacks, hiking boots, etc. Also bring your own food for breakfast and lunch. A refrigerator and kitchen will be available for our use.
More information will be posted here later as needed. If you have questions, leave them in the “Leave a Reply” section and we will be happy to answer them.
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker was last sighted in 1944 and was thought to be extinct. However in 2004 this species was sighted again causing worldwide excitement.
Bobby Harrison, associate professor of art and photography at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, is one of three people to rediscover the Ivory-bill in Arkansas. Please join us to hear Bobby discuss the current controversy surrounding their find, current search efforts in Arkansas’ Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, and the current evidence found in the Florida panhandle search. For more information, please read below:
For more than 60 years, every potential sighting of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker was met with ridicule and scorn. Respected researchers and naturalists were branded as quacks just for having the temerity to say that the Ivory-bill still existed. But Bobby Harrison and Tim Gallagher refused to accept the grim conclusion of most scientists that the Ivory-bill was extinct. Both became interested in the Ivory-bill in 1972 after reading that the Holy Grail of birds had been seen in eastern Texas in the late 1960s. Then like all previous sightings of this ghost, the professional world of ornithology labeled the sighting as a mis-identified Pileated Woodpecker. But that sighting began both Harrison and Gallagher, who did not know each other at the time, on a life-long quest to find the Phantom of the Bayou. Once Harrison and Gallagher discovered each other’s life-long passion for the bird they joined forces and began traveling through the South, interviewing people who claimed to have seen this ghost bird of the shadowy swamp.
And if a sighting seemed credible, they hit the swamp, wading through hip-deep, boot-sucking mud and canoeing through turgid, mud brown bayous where deadly cottonmouths abound. On one of these trips, checking a recent sighting by an Arkansas kayaker, an unmistakable Ivory-bill flew past at close range in front of their canoe. This sighting–the first confirmed sighting since 1944 that two qualified observers had positively identified an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the United States–quickly led to the largest search ever launched to find a rare bird and ultimately to the announcement in April, 2005 of the rediscovery of the species.
Bobby will tell the story of the Ivory-bill’s near demise and miraculous resurrection. His program will cover the current controversy of the Ivory-bill’s rediscovery, the current search effort, and evidence of Ivory-bills that have been recently found in other states. He will also show his unpublished Ivory-billed Woodpecker video that was shot on September 4, 2004. For 33 years Bobby sought the holy grail of birds. His story is a first-hand account of its rediscovery, a story that you will not want to miss!
Brought to you by:
I finally remembered to take pictures of our club field trip to San Angelo. (I was getting tired of staring at Christmas pictures). Two highlights of the day: watching a Great Blue Heron Rookery at Lake Nasworthy, and eating hamburgers at San Angelo State Park compliments of Leon and Bera. The heron pictures are in the Heron Rookery Album, and pictures of our cookout are in the San Angelo Field Trip album. Sometimes events meld together but if you follow the links, I think you can figure it out. Everyone had a good time and the creative captions under the pictures are totaly made up to keep you from falling asleep. And if you’re still awake and want more boredom, a list of what was seen is posted in the Sightings section.
David Blankinship has acquired many titles in his distinguished career. Researcher, biologist, ornithologist, game warden, conservationist, naturalist, preservationist, birder, bird bander, to name a few. Most of David’s career involved working with the Whooping Crane Recovery Project with National Audubon.
The Whooping Crane is one of the rarest North American birds. Once fairly widespread on the northern prairies, it was brought to the brink of extinction in the l940s. There were only 15 Whooping Cranes in Texas but strict protection on their wintering grounds and public education against shooting them gradually helped to increase their numbers. Come find out how David Blankinship’s work with the Whooping Cranes helped insured their chances of recovery.
For as long as David can remember he was fascinated by wildlife, nature, biology and the outdoors. His first books (besides comic books of course) were beginning field guides to birds, fish and mammals. Growing up in McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, David’s first opportunity to work with birds came as a field assistant on the White-wing Dove Research project in l956. This job worked out so well that he worked on the White-wing project every summer from 1956 through 1963. White-wings sent him to and through college.
While working on his doctoral degree at Texas A&M in wildlife management, he made numerous trips into Mexico doing various research. It was on one of his return trips to Texas he met some folks from National Audubon who asked him to be involved in the Whooping Crane Recovery Program. So began his 16 1/2 years as a research biologist for the National Audubon Society (from mid-l970’s to l987) and the opportunities for some of the most rewarding experiences of his career.
David states,
“Working with Whooping Cranes was a tremendous experience. What a privilege to be able to get to know each great white bird on an individual basis, to add to our knowledge of the species and to be in a position to help make management decisions and do battle on their behalf. When the birds went north in the spring the great salt marsh had a vacancy as noticeable as a missing tooth. At least I could help make sure the whoopers could come back to this marsh.”
The Whooping Crane has made a remarkable recovery, with wintering populations well over 200. David conducted numerous presentations, conferences, and workshops all over the world concerning the Whooping Crane Recovery Program. He also participated in a four year cooperative project with National Audubon, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service using radio telemetry to track whoopers in migration between Texas and the nesting grounds in northern Canada and collected data on their behavior and migration habitat use. This project was the subject of a National Geographic Society Television Special, The Flight of the Whooping Crane.
David has now retired from the Fish and Wildlife Services and makes his home in Abilene with his wife Debbie.
Activities David has been involved in:
Since weather did not cooperate on the 20th, we rescheduled this field trip for the 27th. Same instructions: we’ll meet at Denny’s on FM 600 and I-20. We will leave at 7:30 a.m. from Denny’s so if you want breakfast, come early enough to order and eat. Last year’s Jones County field trip produced Burrowing Owl, Sora, Sandhill Cranes, Song Sparrow, and Common Yellowthroat just to name a few. Join us as we drive the county roads looking for avian residents, winter dwelling species, and rarities.
If weather conditions are a problem, please call our hotline (325-691-8981) to hear if the trip has been scheduled. Bring food, snacks, and dress for the weather. For most of the field trip we will be in the car but occasionally we will get out and do easy walking.
Thanks to everyone for making our Christmas gathering fun, festive, surprising, and tasty! The food was delicious, the entertainment informative, and the surprise unexpected. I enjoyed seeing everyone; you are a special group of friends that I can share my enthusiastic joy of birding with. Thank You All for the goodies you brought. A big Thank You to my non-birding spouse for providing the entertainment. I know the hours it took to produce twenty minutes of video. A huge Thank You to Kim for allowing me and John to run around on base and bring you images of the birdlife there. And another Thank You to John for always having a camera handy. I’ve posted a few pictures; they’re in the Christmas Social, 2006 album under Club Activities. Because these photos are candid and not posed (well, one of them was posed), I took the liberty of being a tad creative with captions. I love you all, see you in the field on CBC!
Please join us for a Christmas gathering, Thursday, December 7 at 7 p.m. at the Rose Park Senior Center at the corner of South 7th and Barrow. Bring your favorite finger food (chips, dip, sandwiches, cookies, or whatever goodie can be eaten with the fingers) and a wrapped bird-related under-ten-dollar Christmas gift. We’ll indulge our taste buds, exchange holiday gifts, and watch a few bird videos that Laura took this past birding season if technology cooperates. She will also show off Big Country Audubon’s web site for those that do not have access to computers or the web.
Our gift exchange is purely optional as is dressing like one of Santa’s elves. We’ll number the gifts as they arrive, put corresponding numbers in a “hat,” and draw numbers to determine who gets what gift. If you arrive sans gift; please refrain from drawing a number.
So come hang with your birding friends, eat a few goodies, hear the latest birding news, and enjoy the festive evening.
Join us this Saturday, December 2 for a field trip to Lake Baird in Callahan County, Texas. We will meet at the Towne Crier Restaurant at 818 E. Hwy. 80. We will leave at 7:30 a.m. The restaurant serves breakfast so if you’re hungry come early for breakfast and carpooling. The target birds for this trip will be: White-crowned Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Northern Harrier, American Kestrel, duck species (mergansers and buffleheads are beginning to show on area lakes), Lark Bunting, and whatever else flies in front of us.
Please check our hotline at 325-691-8981 if weather appears problematic. Bring snacks if you like to munch before lunch. This field trip will last until noon at which time we will either go our separate ways or find a place to eat lunch.
