December Meeting Minutes

Cayuga Bird Club Ithaca, New York  Minutes  
Membership Meeting 9 December 2019 Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology  

Meeting called to order at 7:30 pm  Thank you to Ann Mitchell and Gladys Birdsall for cookies. Welcome visitors and new members . November Minutes accepted.  

Cayuga Bird Club T-shirt orders Short-sleeve $18 Long-sleeve $23 Pick up at Jan 13 CBC meeting or pick up in Ithaca by making arrangements with Diane. Order form passed around.  

Recent Field Trips:  Paul Anderson November 16: 1/2 day trip along the lake to Aurora. Raft of Snow Geese, White-winged scoters and Long-tailed ducks at Ladoga, Lesser Black-backed Gull at Myers Point.  Gary Kohlenberg Nov 23 trip to Franklin Mountain, with hope of seeing Golden Eagles. Clear day, light wind- saw 5 golden eagles, distant but good light for excellent scope views + 5 Bald Eagles and 12 Red-tailed Hawks, 9 Common Ravens.  December 7 - Ken Kemphues & Diane Morton: all day trip around the lake - three species of Swans, other waterfowl.  Carl’s field trip to Conowingo Dam in Maryland cancelled due to weather. Carl will reschedule after the new year.  November 24 - our second eBird workshop, led by Diane Morton and Phil McNeil - 10 Cayuga Bird Club members attended, with many questions and discussion of how to use eBird. We also discussed using eBird for Breeding Bird Atlas submissions, which will begin in 2020.  This fall, John Confer’s HHOWLs Saw-whet Banding station had 48 individual participants in addition to plus 19 visitors on the Cayuga Bird Club owling field trip. They banded 36 Northern Saw-whet Owls over 20 nights. This number is fewer than in recent years, and they had fewer hatch-year birds.  

Early bird registrations for Spring Ornithology with Steve Kress- before January 1- will be entered in a drawing for a pair of field guides authored by Dr. Kress: American Museum of Natural History - Pocket Birds of North America, Eastern and Western Regions.  

Upcoming Field Trips: Sunday, Dec 15: Josh Snodgrass: West side of the lake, 1 pm - 6 pm, Meet at Taughannock Falls SP, North Point parking lot, 1pm.  Waterfowl along lake, grassland birds, possible Snowy Owl or Short-eared Owls.  Sunday January 12, 2020: CBC trip around the Lake led by Bob McGuire, meet at east end of Stewart Park at 8:00am.  

Christmas Bird Count: January 1, 2020. 9 Area Leaders. Choose an area and contact that area leader, or contact Diane and she will help you find an area to help out for the Christmas Bird Count. Volunteers with the count should report their numbers to the area leaders by 5 pm, so that they will have time to get all of their area numbers added up before the compilation dinner. If you want to report from your feeders, call 607-254-2473 between 4 and 6 pm with your tallies for each species. Debbie Mahoney and Donna Scott will be taking calls. Sign up sheet passed around for new participants to be contacted about the Christmas Bird Count.  All count participants are invited to a dish-to-pass dinner at Cornell Lab of O on January 1. Doors open at 6pm for dinner at 6:30pm, followed by the Count Compilation. Donna Scott will oversee the dinner set up. Please bring a dish to share with a serving utensil, and your own place setting and beverage. Label your dish if it contains any common allergens. Kathy Strickland volunteered to help with clean up.  After the dinner, we’ll hear a run-down of how many birds of each species were seen in each area. Paul Anderson is our count compiler and will report our findings to Audubon. Paul will let us know if this year’s counts for different species are higher or lower than our average. This is a good way to end the count day.   

Next CBC meeting: January 13: Share Your Photos Night For members - to share up to 5 of their own photos during a 3 minute time slot. You must attend the meeting to show your photos. This is very popular! Submit your photos to our host, Kevin McGowan, by January 10, by emailing them to kjm2@cornell.edu, with the subject line: Bird club photo submission Jan2020. He will send you an acknowledgement when he receives them.  

Cayuga Lake Basin Bird List read by: Gladys Birdsall. 88 species were reported for the last week.  

Program Speaker: Jody Enck “What makes a birder a birder?”  Jody Enck is a former president of Cayuga Bird Club, our club’s Conservation Action committee chair, founder of the Sister Bird Club network, as well as coordinator of our club’s international trips with Holbrook Travel. Jody  presented results from his research on birding identities among people interacting in various ways with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s programs. He narrowed these identity types to four main categories and discussed how they are different from one another, and how the lab might use that information for marketing across groups.  

Meeting adjourned at 9:00pm.