February Meeting Minutes

President Jody Enck called the meeting to order at 7:30. Cookies were provided.

Ann Mitchell reported on recent field trips. Ann led a trip on February 11 around Cayuga Lake; notable birds were Lapland Longspur and Northern Shrike.

Future trips:  Suan Yong will lead another trip around the lake on February 26, and Jody Enck will lead a walk on February 18 for the  Friends of Stewart Park in connection with the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Jody Enck reported that our annual Executive Committee Meeting was held on February 6 with several topics being discussed. It was noted that Marie Read’s art exhibit opening will not be sponsored by the Cayuga Bird Club since it would be disallowed by the Club’s 501c3 status and would not be in accordance with some of our own Club bylaws. It was also proposed that future monetary dispositions will be reviewed by the executive committee after discussion by the Club and before being opened for voting on the floor of a subsequent Club meeting.

In March, Marie Read will have an exhibit in the Fuertes Room at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The grand opening will take place on March 13,  5:30 - 7:30 pm at the Lab of Ornithology (just before the next Cayuga Bird Club meeting).

The March Cayuga Bird Club meeting and program will be held on March 13. Our speaker will be Club President Jody Enck as he shares about his recent trip to Honduras as well as ideas for creating a Sister Bird Club Network, linking bird clubs in the US and Honduras.

In other business, Bob McGuire shared about the future availability of Nathan Pieplow’s Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Eastern North America.

Carl Steckler read the list of the birds of the Cayuga Basin.

The speaker for the evening was Jennifer Walsh-Emond, PhD, currently an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology working with Dr. Irby Lovette.  She spoke about how adaptations to tidal marshes shape differences between Saltmarsh and Nelson's Sparrows, based upon her 10 years of field work and laboratory studies.

Respectfully submitted,

Colleen Richards, Acting Recording Secretary