INDEX

• President's column
• Commissioners Meisburg and Thaell join in Bird-A-Thon Fundraising Effort
• Beginning Birdwatching classes
• Notes from the Trail: Audubon Ecology Workshop

The Apalachee Audubon Chapter wants to recognize and thank Buckeye Florida for its generous contribution in support of publishing this Newsletter.

Here we go again.  This newsletter signals the beginning of a new administrative year for Apalachee Audubon.  The Board and I have scheduled an array of programs, field trips, bird walks, and special events planned to keep you informed and entertained.  I hope you will join us and participate in as many events as you find time for.  I think you will be amply rewarded.
 You will also note changes in the newsletter.  We have made it smaller and more concise to save both time and money.  We have been unable to find a volunteer willing to take on the newsletter editor job but are still hopeful that someone will step forward.  Please let us know if you are interested.   At the same time we have placed more emphasis on upcoming programs and field trips and added a member travel column for which we hope to have many participant writers. Please send me any articles you wish to offer for publication.  I hope you will approve of the changes and pass on any advice.  Get ready for a great year!
-- Jim Shelton

Index

City Commissioner Steve Meisburg and County Commission Chairman Cliff Thaell joined in Apalachee Audubon’s annual effort to raise funds for environmental education and conservation. Thaell and Meisburg joined a bird a thon team and personally solicited contributions from their supporters.  This year we were able to raise over eight thousand dollars, double last year’s total. Thaell and Meisburg were instrumental to our success and the Chapter owes them a debt of gratitude.  It is a secure feeling to have such environmentally conscious and helpful representatives in our community.
Thank you Cliff and Steve.

Index

We will be offering a beginning birding class in mid October.   Exact dates and location is to be determined by the level of interest and will be announced in the October newsletter.  This class will cover birding basics; optics, field guides, equipment, and identification skills.  The cost is $35 and the class will meet for two classroom sessions and two field classes.  If interested or to obtain more information please call Ellen or Jim Shelton at 942-5194

Index

  The Audubon Camp is an ecology workshop with both a teaching and a research mission.  Participants enjoy a week-long activity-filled experience in a conservation camp located in the Torrey Creek valley at an altitude of 7500 feet on the eastern slope of the Rockies of northwestern Wyoming.  Thus the area is dry with a short growing season.  But the riparian area along the creek provides habitat for wildlife such as moose, otter, coyotes, herons, and various small birds.

Staff at the camp during our session taught in the areas of geology (water cycle, geological processes, rock and mineral identification), zoology (mammal, bird, and insect life), botany (trees, wild flowers), and human (establishing relationships, telling stories, knowing oneself, understanding prehistoric cultures, petroglyph study). Although most of the sessions integrated content across more than one aspect of the ecosystem, we ourselves made connections among all the different phenomena and were led to contemplate the impact of humans on the fragile ecosystem.

  Except for the many Caissin's finches, pine siskins, and rufous hummingbirds at the camp feeders, the number of birds we saw during the week was not large, but our birding experiences were intense.  On one hike we watched a Clarke's nutcracker busily and noisily tearing open the green cones at the top of a limber pine to store its nuts in her throat pouch with a 90 nut capacity!  She would later visit various spots to cache her nuts (thousands and thousands accumulated over the course of the season), and retrieve them as needed using landmarks of various kinds to do so.  The many limber pines straddling or in other ways seeming to grow out of huge granite rocks all over the valley nicely exemplifies the intricate relationship among the species of this unique habitat.
--Elizabeth Platt
 

Editors note:  This is the first in a series of articles about exciting and interesting trips our members have taken.  Appropriately, Elizabeth experienced the best of Audubon, at one of our own ecology camps.  They are wonderful and all who have been on one will surely agree. If you have a special trip that you would like to share with us, let us know.  Please send your article (250-300 words) to Jim Shelton  via E Mail to birdjim@sprintmail.com.

Index

end of page