February 2025
Meeting Minutes

Minutes of Cayuga Bird Club Monthly Meeting, Monday, February 10, 2025 at Cornell Lab of Ornithology Auditorium. 

Attendance: 64

Lab opened at 6:45pm to accommodate those wanting to purchase books for the book signing by the author/ our guest speaker, Matt Young. The Wild Birds Unlimited store is normally only open 10-4pm but they made an exception for this event. 

7:30pm Good evening, everyone. 

Jody Enck did the Reading of the List. 

Tonight is:

• our first-ever booksigning,

• our welcome partnership with the folks from WBU who opened the store to support this event and who are here tonight: Lorraine, Tessa & Kristin

• an update on one of our Project Proposals from December – the Educational Book distribution to support the Wild Guyaquil Initiative, 

• and, of course, tonight’s feature presentation from Matt Young

Stephanie called tonight’s business meeting to order and welcomed both members and guests.

Is there anyone here tonight for whom this is your first CBC meeting? Three first time people raised their hands, including Courtney Jett, a CBC field trip leader. 

A correction to last month’s minutes was offered prior to meeting, so minutes are approved as corrected. 

Cookies

Thank you to club member, BBW leader and active CAC participant, Tracy McLellan, for tonight’s tasty treats. 

The cookie sign-up sheet is on the table in the back; if you enjoy baking and would like to make sure we have cookies for our next 3 regular meetings, please sign up on your way out tonight.

Project Proposal Update - Book of Birds/ Wild Guayaquil Initiative

Before we cover the rest of our regular agenda, we have a noteworthy topic this evening: an update from Juan de Dios, from whom we heard a sneak peek in November of last year on a project that the club agreed to fund in December. We rarely get in-person updates from our farthest-flung projects, but tonight, we are going to get two of them!

A warm welcome back was given to Juan de Dios for an update of our CBC project in Ecuador.

Juan presented CBC a token of gratitude, a framed, handmade 3D ceramic parrot head, which Stephanie gratefully accepted. 

He then showed a short video of four locations of children, bird watching, using a shotgun microphone, binoculars, scopes, and perusing their own copies of Juan de Dios Morales’ book, DESCUBRIENDO EL BOSQUE SECO TROPICAL, con las aves de Cerro Blanco. (Discovering The Tropical Dry Forest, with the birds of Cerro Blanco) Juan expressed gratitude to CBC for supporting his project of providing funding used to support the education of these children, many of whom will become equipped to have careers as nature/birding guides. Video ended with children holding their new books, paid for by CBC, saying, “Thank you Cayuga Bird Club.”

Next Meeting

Our next club next meeting is Monday March 10th here at the Lab Visitor Center auditorium.

Our speaker will be Morgan Hapeman, a raptor rehabilitator from Kentucky, Inc., who founded and has been the Executive Director for the Finger Lakes Raptor Center in Lodi NY. 

Her presentation will be Rehabilitating Wild Birds from a professional’s perspective, where she will discuss wildlife rehab licensing requirements, why birds come to rehab, what to do if you find a sick, injured or orphaned wild bird and more. 

Recent CBC Field Trip

February 9 from 12-7pm, Onondaga Lake waterfowl and eagles and Auburn Crow roosting gathering was led by Kevin Murphy & Meena Haribal. 

Kevin reported 4 participants, a view of a loon being eaten by a bald eagle, 7 Great Blue Herons, huge rafts of Redheads sticking together to decrease their odds of being singled out by Bald Eagles. 12 bald eagles were spotted from both of two vantage points — the end of Creek walk hot spot and the Marshy Spits hot spot bridge; earlier in the week others reported as many as 50 had been observed at one time.

Meena reported on the Auburn crow gathering portion of the trip. After watching birds at Onondaga Lake with Kevin, we headed down to Auburn city. We went to Auburn parking garage, from where we watched the crows. And the estimate for the crows this day was only about 10K while last year we watched more than 200k crows. 

Upcoming CBC Field Trip

Celebrate the Great Backyard Bird Count weekend with a full-day Winter Finch Adventure with Caleb Centanni, Saturday, February 15th.  For this trip, Caleb will lead an exploration of elevated forest lands in the eastern Finger Lakes in search of finches and other winter forest birds, potentially including visiting historic or current known sites and checking good habitat off the beaten path. This winter is seeing a low intensity irruption of Evening Grosbeaks, so they will be a potentially findable target species. Plan to meet at 7:00am at the Lab’s Visitors lot for carpooling. Dress for weather in layers and walking in snow and ice.  The trip is open to everyone. Caleb announced that the weather check so far is good. There is a need for a driver with a vehicle that has great snow traction. 

Please check the Cayuga Bird Club calendar and/or Cayugabirds Listserve updates on the exact start time, or feel free to reach out to Caleb Centanni (caleb@centanni.com) to confirm details.

Youth Birding

Our Youth Birder program, organized by the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, has their schedule planned for the new year:

Saturday, February 15 8:45am-3pm

Trip to Montezuma for a Bald Eagle talk and possible walk. Also, we will look for snowy owls on the way home in the Finger Lakes Airport area. Leaving CCETC 9am SHARP (talk is at 10am at Montezuma)

Return to CCETC around 3pm
Bring a lunch and snacks-- Beth will bring snacks also.

Saturday, March 8, 1pm-4pm (Birding at 1pm, Raptors at 2:30pm)

Cornell Raptor Program is back! Youth will experience a presentation from Cornell Raptor Program members about the birds they bring, and then have Q&A time as well as time to look at raptors up close.  CBC members are welcome to attend.

• Meets at CCETC at 1pm for a local bird walk with Suan, with presentation starting at 2:30pm.

Other programs with details TBD are planned for

• Sunday, March 30, 9am-11:30am, meet at CCETC

• Saturday, April 19, 9am-11:30am meet at CCETC

Keep an eye on the club’s Youth Birding page for emerging information on those programs.

SOSK

Our Spring Ornithology with Steve Kress course is just around the corner. 

Scholarships are available to youth and educators to take the course with the scholarship application available at www.cayugabirdclub.org/spring-ornithology. 

NYSOA 2025

Next, let’s hear from Diane Morton, who has a few words to share about this year’s CBC-hosted NYSOA conference.

Diane urged everyone to mark their calendars for September 19-21. Registration begins April 1st. Keynote speaker will be Peter Kaestner, who will take us on a pictorial journey through his lifetime of birding and his pursuit to find 10,000 bird species, including representatives of every bird family. 

Birds of a Feather

 Our final bit of business tonight are a few birds-of-feather announcements

1. If you haven’t gone to Trumansburg to check out Ken Haas’s Photography Exhibit, where you will find examples of his work like this charming brown creeper, head on up to the Ulysses Philomathic where he will be showing thru the end of this month

2. If you are interested in a free opportunity to learn more about invasive pests threatening our forests, go to https://events.cornell.edu/event/Invasive-Species-opening and register for the
   
   Exhibit Opening and Talk: Invasive Species in the Northeast
   Lecture by Grace Haynes (NYS Hemlock Initiative) with Johannes Lehmann (SIPS / The Soil Factory)

Thursday, February 27, 4:00 p.m.

Mann Library, Room 160 on the Cornell Campus, followed by a Reception & remarks by visual artist Hovey Brock and students of the interdisciplinary field class “Earth Projects” (ENVS 3200)

Thursday, February 27, 5:00 p.m.

Cornell Mann Gallery

  3. The Lab is looking for any additional volunteers for their Spring Kids Discover the Trails program. If you are interested or just curious to learn more, please see Suan! 

Tonight's Presentation

And now for tonight’s presentation. Tonight’s speaker is a co-lead on the Evening Grosbeak Road to Recovery Project, in addition to the Founder and Board President of the Finch Research Network.

Matt worked in the field of social work with special needs populations at the William George Agency for 12+ years and is currently a Wild Bird Products Specialist and Conservation Coordinator for Aspen Song Wild Bird Food.

 Matt previously worked for 15 years at the Cornell Lab on Golden-winged Warblers, Voices of Hawaii’s Birds, and Merlin Bird ID; there he was also the Project Lead on the Lab’s first Irruptive Finch Survey in 1999.

 Widely known as a preeminent authority on finches of North America, he has written finch species accounts for breeding bird atlases & Birds of the World, as well as publishing several papers on finches and the Red Crossbill vocal complex, and now, co-authoring the newly published Stokes Guide to Finches with Lillian Stokes.

 This evening he will talk about and update us on both the second project the Cayuga Bird Club approved in December of last year, and the subject of tonight’s book-signing. 

So please join me in warmly welcoming Matt Young as he presents

The Evening Grosbeak Road to Recovery Project and the Stokes Guide to Finches of the United States and Canada.