October 2024 Meeting Minutes

Cayuga Bird Club Minutes

October 14, 2024 

Foundation of Light

7:20 - Ken Haas: Reading of the List. Many were amazed at Ann Mitchell’s multiple yeses, even to a Snow Goose!

7:30 Call tonight’s business meeting to order

Welcome everyone - Is there anyone here tonight for whom it is your first meeting? 

• A couple of young Cornell postdocs who have only been here 3 months

• Ella who recently moved to Dryden and just joined CBC

• Dan, a young NYS Park Service employee. 

Thank you for joining us!

Any corrections offered for our last meeting minutes of September?

None heard, so last month’s meeting minutes will be noted as approved as written.

Just a reminder, anyone can access the meeting minutes from the cayugabirdclub.org Home Page via the “See Meetings and Speakers Page” link.

Thank you Beth Suddaby for tonight’s delicious homemade lemon cookies & shortbread.

Our November speaker will be Fred Leff, Environmental Educator for Seneca Meadows

who will be presenting “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sandhill Cranes But Were Afraid To Ask.”  

(Janie Leff proactively added, “just so you all know, he is not my husband.”)

Our November meeting will finally be at the new auditorium in the Lab’s Visitor’s Center.

Reminder that tonight is the last day to renew your CBC membership and get a coupon code for a free Bird academy course good until the end of January 2025

There are a couple ways to pay, either in person via check written to the CBC which you can give to me before you leave, or online on our Club’s Membership page via Paypal.  

Paid members get to vote for things like tonight’s slate of officers, entry to restricted field trips and the monthly newsletter automatically emailed to them.  It’s a GREAT price for an excellent club, and…

Fun fact: if you are a member for 30 years, you get a lifetime membership and the club has about a dozen and a half people who are in this category!

Recent Field Trips

First, let’s get an update from Gladys Birdsall on her recent trip to Dryden Lake and the Jim Shrug Trail: 

• There were 15 participants & absolutely perfect weather. 

• Not too birdy on the water. 

• She named 9 of the 20+ species observed: WTSP, COHA, RWBL,YRWA, CAGO, GWTE, NOPI, GBHE, PUFI.

• It was a wonderful outing.

Upcoming Field Trips
It’s fall migration season and on November 2, Steve Kress will be leading our fall Trip around Cayuga Lake and Montezuma Wildlife Refuge to look for waterfowl and “other birds”.

Meet at Stewart Park at 8.00 am. First parking lot on the right as soon as you enter the park towards northeastern side.

Expect to see lots of migrating waterfowl along the lake and MNWR wildlife drive. Plus, there may be a few lingering shorebirds and birds like American Pipits and Horned Larks. As usual, look for evasive Cliff Swallows. If you are lucky you may spot one.

Dress for cold weather in layers, bring gloves and hats. Bring a scope if you have one and/or binoculars. Bring water and hot drinks, plus snacks and a lunch. We will stop on the way at Aurora or some location for food and bathroom.

Annual Loon Watch 11/3 6:27am-8:27 am at Taughhannock Falls SP, led by Jared Dawson, Scott Sutcliffe & Stephanie Herrick. This is an annual event to look for migrating loons that head south for winter. 

 Initially, there will be flights,  predominantly Common Loons, that rise at dawn from northerly portions of Cayuga Lake, and by 7:30 a.m. we will see loons coming over not just from the north end of Cayuga Lake, but also from Lake Ontario and other points north. You might also witness other migrating waterfowl like scoters and Long-tailed Ducks, as well as the occasional Red-throated Loon. 

Migration is a weather-dependent event; on good north-wind days you might see thousands of loons migrating over Cayuga Lake. North wind means cold and freezing, and standing in the wind can be very cold.  So dress properly for the weather. Bring warm gloves and hats. Also carry warm liquids to keep you warm.

The precise times are part of a protocol that counts the loons in 15-minute periods beginning 15 minutes before the sunrise at 6:42. Note clocks will be set back one hour.

Recent totals have been: 

11/18/23, 88;

11/19/22, 165;

11/10/21, 137;

11/7/21, 41.

Meet at the northernmost parking lot of the State Park south of the creek, which if you are coming from the Ithaca area, is the right turn into the park, before the bridge.

Beginner Bird Walks every Saturday & Sunday, led by CBC members, 1.5-2 hours. November fall back to starting at 9:30am. Suan traveling till January. Beth Bannister will be main PoC, bab47@cornell.edu, cc Suan

Conservation Action Committee raises funds for CBC by sponsoring international field trips, in collaboration with  Holbrook Travel.

Peru: July 2025

• Main Peru trip - July 15-23, 2025

• Optional Machu Pichu extension - July 23-26, 2025

The main trip will be a 9-day program to explore the Peruvian desert, Huaca Pucllanaruins, and the Amazon, with an optional 4-day extension to Machu Pichu.

These trips build not only life-lists, but memories of a lifetime.  Spots are still open for this club fundraiser with links listed in our newsletter.

Motus Update

Our Motus towers continue to pick up birds-on-the-move.

Since last month’s meeting, an EASTERN WHIP-POOR-WILL was detected by our Motus receiver at Myers Point on September 30th at approximately 10:45 pm. The bird had been tagged in Maine on June 10, 2024, part of the Maine Nightjar Monitoring Project, and flew by a receiver at Bennington College in Vermont on September 23, before being detected a week later at Myers Point.  More recently the bird was in western Pennsylvania on its way south. 

New York State Ornithological Association Conference, Ithaca, New York 2025 

• September 19-21st 2025 at Ithaca Downtown Conference Center, hosted by the Cayuga Bird Club. 

• Keynote speaker Peter Kisner: In search of the Orange-Tufted Spiderhunter.

• Explore the new Cornell Lab Of Ornithology Visitor Center.

• Field trips to area hotspots 

• Afternoon papers session, and more.

•  www.nysoa2025.org

This year, NYSOA held their annual meeting remotely via a fairly tightly run Zoom meeting with an add-on for the youth birder’s “guess this bird” contest, but next year Ithaca will be hosting the event in-person.

President’s Annual Report

It was another successful year for the CBC and while this is called the President’s report, this is really a summary of the last 12 months of the club’s accomplishments across all dimensions of our activities.

Membership

• Continues to grow! 

• Over 380 (translates to well over 400 members since a good portion of memberships are for families)

Monthly Meetings

• Continued in-person meetings at the Foundation of Light; are lined up to return to CLO Visitor Center in November ‘24

• Christmas Bird Count & Celebration dinner @ FoL

• Annual Share Your Photos night (Zoom only)

• Annual picnic at Myers

Field Trips

• Over 30 to locations in the basin and beyond

• Tested a “bird my property” approach at Scott Sutcliffe’s farm

• 100+ Beginner Birdwalks (2 dozen leads/co-leads)

Youth Birders

• Monthly trips and activities; mainly 10-12 YOs

Spring Ornithology with Steve Kress

• 66 paid participants, 39 free Kendal participants

• Zoom turnout also ~30/week

CAC

• Ongoing habitat restoration at Lighthouse Point & Renwick Woods w/ New Roots charter school, IC, Cornell and others 

• Partnership with Grasslands Initiative w/ active species monitoring by club members on multiple FLLT properties

• MOTUS continued to record activity at the Myers tower and made upgrades to both towers 

• Second PUMA house up and used! New babies!

• Fundraiser international trip to Belize and Guatemala

Project Requests

• $5000 to FLLT for an addition to the Lindsay Parsons parcel that we purchased 

• Additional binoculars for weekend bird walks, which are much appreciated by participants.

Misc

• 2nd Edition of Birding the Cayuga Basin was made available for purchase at different locations

• CBC Atlasers contributed to the final stretch of the 3rdBBA

NEW!

• DEI Committee (diversity, equity, inclusion) 

• Member survey

• Planning NYSOA 2025; 2014 was CBC’s last year hosting it.

Officer Elections

• President: 

Stephanie Herrick*

• Vice President:

Kevin Murphy

• Treasurer:

Ken Kemphues*

• Recording Secretary: 

Janie Leff*

• Corresponding Secretary:

Colleen Richards*

• Director:

Gladys Birdsall

By unanimous vote, the slate of officers were approved.

Brief announcements or news from the floor: 

• Ken Haas enthusiastically reported that he observed on two consecutive days, several Blue Jays at the hanging tray feeder, being bombarded repeatedly by a Sharp-shinned Hawk! It appeared as play, and Sharpie was never successful at catching any of them, nor did he frighten them away. They kept coming back to continue the game. Ken had never observed this behavior before and figured the hawk was certainly not an accurate hunter and that he probably would be better off hunting mourning doves.

• Ann Mitchell shared her delight at seeing in October, Sandhill Cranes dancing at Montezuma! That is very late in the year for such activity.

• Stu, who started off by saying that he’s no birder, was driving to Woodstock & a bald eagle flew right across the road, right in front of his car! Then on the way back, he saw 2 bald eagles together. “It never gets old,” Someone then informed him, “Stu, you ARE a birder!” Stu recalled public service announcements regarding how endangered bald eagles had become. And now they abound!

Tonight‘s presentation: Ticks and the ripple effects of disease in ecological communities. Speaker – Joel Brown, post doc, Cornell University Baker Institute of Animal Health and the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health.

Presentation was recorded and will soon be available on CBC’s YouTube site.

Meeting ended at 9pm after a lively Q&A session.