Cayuga Bird Club

Meeting Minutes

9/08/25

Cornell Lab Visitors Center Auditorium

7:30 pm-9pm

Reading of the list (7:20)

Reminder: We have a professional photographer attending tonight’s meeting to take photos for marketing materials that the Lab is producing for Auditorium use. 

Former club president and current NYSOA conference registrar, Susan Danskin, led us through the reading of the list.  

Call to Order

7:30 Call first regular business meeting for the 2025-26 season to order.

Newcomers:

• Janelle (cemetery walk near Cornell)

• Matthew (Ithaca College freshman - local)

Thank you for joining us!

Meeting minutes from prior meeting accepted as written

Cookies

It’s a new season, and CBC members love our cookies – please sign up!

Next Meeting

Our October 13th meeting will be here at the Lab’s Visitor’s Center auditorium.  

Speakers: Jody Enck and fellow travelers from April Cuba trip

Reminder

Reminder renew your CBC membership by October 14th and get a coupon code for any free Bird academy course good until December 1st 2025 (correction to the Jan 2026 date in the newsletter)

There are a couple ways to pay to get your coupon:

•        either in person via check written to the CBC, which you can mail to the club or give to Diane before you leave,

•        or online on our Club’s Membership page via Paypal. 

Club dues support club’s activities, including our monthly meetings with invited speakers, club projects, and more. And club members have additional benefits such as getting to vote for things like the club’s annual budget, project proposals and elected officers, have entry to restricted field trips, and have the monthly newsletter automatically emailed to them.

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

For our next topic, I would normally call our Treasurer, Ken Kemphues, to present the Club Financials for the new year, but Ken could not be here tonight, so I will walk thru the corrected version of the proposed club budget for fiscal year 2025-26 (September 30, 2025 – October 1, 2026), after which club members will vote to approve the budget.

(Corrected) CBC 2025-26 Budget

I say “corrected” version since there was a typo spotted in the table published in the Sept newsletter (thank you, Tracy)! The "Speaker honoraria/dinners" line showed income rather than expense for 24-25 because I forgot to put a negative sign.  Correcting that typo reduces the net income for 24-25 by $1095.  

The full yearly financial report will be presented at the October meeting and will include the financial outcome from the NYSOA conference. The table displayed provides details of the 2025-26 proposed budget, and for comparison, the 2024-25 approved budget and the actual income and expenditures from 2024-25. Items in red are changes from last year’s budget.

Note that our income last year exceeded our expenses by about $9.3K. This was due to both higher than expected income and lower than expected expenditures. Club expenses outside of the budget included a commitment of $2500 to the Conservation Action Committee, $3355 to the Finch Research Network, and $3500 to Youth Education in Guayaquil Ecuador. Overall, the proposed budget for the new year includes only incremental changes from last year’s budget and presents little risk of overspending.

Club members are now invited to vote on the 2025-26 Club Budget.

Motion to approve this year’s budget?         Donna Scott

Second?                                                       Suan Yong

All in favor?                                              <unianimous>

Opposed?                                                 <none>

Officer Nominations

Next, I present the new year’s slate of nominees for officer roles that will be voted on in the October meeting

Most of our officer nominees are incumbents – VP, Treasurer, Recording Secretary and Corresponding Secretary

Stephanie will be concluding her 3 consecutive years and, if voted in, will roll into the Director role along with Continuing Directors Jared Dawson and Gladys Birdsall

And, topping the slate, Tracy McLellan has stepped up to be our new club President nominee

Do club members have any nominations from the floor at this time for this year’s officers?

Other nominations may be sent by club members to senior director Jared Dawson

2025 Montezuma Muckrace

This past weekend was this year’s 24-hr “Big Day” style birding event hosted by the Friends of the Montezuma Wetlands Complex. Teams of birders, including 8 teams from Cornell alone, competed in the event to see how many species they can identify. In addition to providing some good fun and excitement, rain or shine, the raises money to support avian research and conservation within the Montezuma Wetlands complex.  The club regularly funds registrations for up to 3 teams in the Muckrace.  This year the club covered 2 teams: Bob McGuire’s Arrogant Bustards and Suan Yong’s Shutterbirds. 

• Suan Yong - photo team Shutter Birds saw 82 species

• Bob McGuire - Arrogant Bustards saw 111 species

NYSOA 2025 Conference

After two years of planning and preparing to host this almost-annual event, I would like to call on our NYSOA 2025 Conference Team chair, Diane Morton, to make any final announcements.

• “Thank you” to all volunteers

• announcement of clothing availability: NYSOA tee shirts as well as new Bird Club tees and hats (available at WBU)

• a few more volunteers still needed

Upcoming CBC Events

Next up – other CBC Events during the month of September

September is going to be admittedly light on weekend field trips due to the amount of effort a core group of people are putting into the conference, but there is a variety of recurring and other scheduled bird outing events that folks can still look forward to.

•        Wed – Bird Banding at Lindsay Parsons 7:10-11:10 am

•        Thurs – Birding Meetups 7-8:30 am birding, then breakfast

•        Sat & Sun - SSW Beginner Bird Walks 8:30-10:00 am

•        Sat 9/13 – Migration Celebration (@Lab) 10:00 am-3:00 pm

•        Sun 9/14 – Lighthouse Pt Conservation Workday 9:00am-noon

•        Sun 9/28 – Stewart Park field trip (Suan) 8:00-10:00 am

CAC Video

Jody and his dedicated Conservation Action Committee have also been spending a good deal of time getting ready for the upcoming conference, where a field trip will be held at Lighthouse Point to showcase the CAC’s teamwork and partnering with local community members.  I expect that Jody will have a good story to tell at the October meeting, but in the meanwhile, for anyone who does not visit the club on Instagram or Facebook, a brief Conservation Action Committee visual treat created by Suan Yong.

Showed Suan's time-lapse YouTube video of Cornell Athletes’ participation

Help Wanted!

If you have a knack for editorial work, are you familiar with using publishing templates, sizing images, proofreading, and page layout and enjoy keeping abreast of the bird club's activities, Jane Bain would like to talk to you!  Jane will be stepping down as Newsletter Editor for the Cayuga Bird Club after 3 years and would like to work with a club member to transition this vital role to someone new.   

Birds of a Feather

One Birds of a Feather announcement tonight – Birdability, who provided many insights for our club’s DEI committee and is an inspiration to folks like me who found their original t-shirt tag line of “Birding is for Every Body” to be personally relevant – is having their annual Birdability week next month.  Their schedule is on their website and there look to be many interesting opportunities for folks.  Check it out!

• October 20-26th

• Schedule is “live”

• Registration is open

• www.birdability.org/birdability-week

Project Proposal 

Bird Banding: Lindsay Parsons (songbirds) & Connecticut Hill (saw whet owls)

As you may have seen in the newsletter, we have a new project proposal that is related to the bird banding that has been held this summer at Lindsay Parsons.  Club vice president, Kevin Murphy, led tonight’s project proposal.

Max Baber, aka “Hummingbird” 

• introduced himself and his plan for a long-term non-profit venture.  

• CBC Project Request due to USGS funding up in the air; hoping for additional funding

• Saw whet funding dependent on permit

• Proposed 1 year reports plus newsletter articles. 

Bob McGuire reported on how this fulfills our Club’s mission and benefits Club

Motion to fund the initial $3K songbird proposal - Donna Scott; seconded - Ken Haas

Motion to fund the add’l saw whet owl 1119.38 - Donna Scott; seconded - Ann Mitchell

Discussion: 

• Bob McGuire made a motion to table funding until there was a) approval by DEC, b) after Thursday

• So moved by Stephanie Herrick; seconded - Donna Scott

• Amended by Kevin Murphy (to not include new article)

Vote:

• All in favor (all but one)

• All opposed (one)

• Motion carried

Presentation

And now for our presentation.

Our presenter tonight may be familiar to some, having spoken a different meeting a couple years ago at Kendal!  For those not having had the pleasure, tonight’s speaker is an evolutionary ecologist interested in understanding how humans change the way closely-related species interact and shift their evolutionary trajectories.

As a mentor, teacher, advocate, and storyteller, our speaker builds upon a foundation of natural history while intentionally weaving field studies and genomics together to study hybridization in the context of human change. For her dissertation research, she founded and directed the Boulder Chickadee Study, a citizen science network of over 75 households and 400 nest boxes to explore the natural histories of Colorado chickadees and understand how humans are shifting evolution for species living alongside us. This evening, she will dig into the details of one way in which mountain chickadees have adapted to co-exist with a closely-related and ecologically-similar species: black-capped chickadees.

Please join me for a warm “welcome back” to tonight’s speaker, Katheryn Grabenstein, as she presents “Mountain Chickadees change their tune when they live beside black-capped chickadees”.

Recording