Lower Neuse Bird Club

Transcription

1 September 2016 Volume 25 Issue 1 Editor: Carol Oldham, LowerNeuseBirdClub@gmail.com Club Officers President Bob Gould Vice President Who will it be? Secretary Mike Brooks Treasurer Christine Root Field Trips Al Gamache Newsletter Editor Carol Oldham Refreshments Captain Susan McCrocklin Welcome Back! By Bob Gould, President After a brutally hot August, September is fast approaching along with the start of our new birding year. Our planning group met in mid-august and I hope we ve put together a good variety of First-Saturday outings and some interesting program ideas. We plan to do both a Pea Isalnd trip in November and a mountain trip in May. For our September meeting, I want to concentrate on LNBC business. Jim Oldham has resigned as Vice President as business commitments require more of his time. If we want to continue our love of birding as a club, we need to fill our key positions. Bring your thoughts, ideas, and volunteer spirit to our kick-off meeting. Here s hoping for another great year of birding. Your help and enthusiasm will make it happen! First Meeting of the Program Year Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 6:30 pm Meetings are held at Garber United Methodist Church, Country Club Road, New Bern, Room 123 of the Ministry Center, across the street from the main church. Parking and entrance are at the rear of the building. Join us for refreshments & conversation for the first half hour; meeting begins at 7 pm. Refreshments for this meeting are being provided by Jenny McDiarmid. With all that is going on in the world I turn to birds and nature to help restore my equilibrium. From BIRD WATCHERS DIGEST, A Letter from the Editor, March/April 2016

2 Page 2 First Saturday Field Trips Mark your calendars with the following dates for this season s bird walks. Most trips end by noon and do not require much walking. Remember to bring your binoculars, scopes, field guides, insect repellent, rain gear, snacks and water. CBC Meeting Dates Sep 30-Oct 1, 2016 Beaufort, SC Jan 27-28, 2017 Nags Head, NC Spring 2017 Winston-Salem, NC Unless otherwise announced, all trips depart from the parking lot of the Bridge Pointe Hotel at 7 am sharp. Carpools can be arranged as we meet up. The planned destination may be changed at the last minute if a special sighting or different location gives us a better opportunity for birding. Information will be updated with each newsletter. September 10 Cedar Island September 24 New Bern Quarry (Fall Warbler migration) October 1 New Bern Quarry (Fall Warbler migration) November 5 Simmons Street Project, New Bern December 3 New Bern area for ducks+ January 4 Pamlico County February 11 Mattamuskeet March 11 North River Preserve April 1 Croatan May 13 Camp Brinson June 3 North River Preserve Extra Birding Opportunities These extra birding trips are still in the planning stage. More details will be provided as they become available. Bear Walk with Mike Campbell, October 25, Pocosin Lakes area Pea Island, November Includes Roper/Phelps Lake/Alligator River Spring Mountain Trip, May 9-11 (tentative)

3 Volume 25, Issue 1 Page 3 Minutes from May 2016 President Bob Gould greeted 28 members and one guest to the last meeting of the birding year. Bob summarized the plans for the Camp Brinson trip on May14th and the trip to the North River Preserve on June 4th. With great sadness, Bob Gould announced that Bob Holmes had passed away on April 29th. Bob Holmes was an avid birder, a member of the NC 400 Club, and a founding member of the LNBC. His contributions to the club and birding in North Carolina were immense. Carol Oldham agreed to send the Sun Journal obituary to the club's members. Also, Wade Fuller wrote a very nice obituary and it appears on the American Birding Association web site (Birding.ABA.org) dated April 30th. The club is considering the purchase of a tree in the Valle Crucis Park in memory of Bob Holmes. He will be greatly missed by everyone who knew him. Al Gamache reported on the spring meeting of the Carolina Bird Club. In all, 181 birders spotted 141 species which included a Broad-winged Hawk, Spotted Sandpiper, a Bank Swallow, and warblers: Black-throated Blue, Blue-winged, and Canada. Particularly newsworthy was the information on some new smartphone apps. From the authors of The Warbler Guide, the Warbler App costs $12.99 and is available now in the App Store for the Apple phones. A version for the Android phones will be released in the near future. Another exciting app is BirdGenie which will be available for Apple and Android smartphones or tablet in June. Birders can use this tool to record the sound of the singing bird. BirdGenie then identifies the bird. In Memoriam Tree at Valle Crucis Park in memory of Bob Holmes. Spring migration has started which means that members may see warblers in their personal ventures and during the Camp Brinson and North River Preserve trips. Thus, the program for this meeting, Watching Warblers, was a timely video to see and enjoy. The DVD has many segments, but Bob showed just the birds that we may encounter in Eastern North Carolina.

4 Page 4 A Few Summer Birds By Al Gamache April is the cruelest month. The opening line of the famous 20th century poem, The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot. June is the Cruelest Month. A few years ago, I was reading a book on birding, and the author was leading his readers through the seasons of the year, month by month, pointing out many of the highlight or specialty birds one could find each month. But when he got to the chapter on June, playing off of Eliot s line, he entitled that chapter, June is the Cruelest Month. Of course, what he was referring to was that after the magnificent splendor of Spring migration, in June things just settle down and there s not much new coming through. And basically, he s right. However, this June things were a little different. Right off the bat, on our First Saturday Bird Walk in June, down at the North River Preserve, we were able to secure our target bird, a small population of Dickcissels (a dozen or so). In addition, I m always most grateful and delighted to see a few Common Nighthawks that were flying over these fields at the Preserve. That bird is key to me. Had it not been for a Common Nighthawk (a very edgy bird) coursing about in the late afternoon skies up in Menomonie, Wisconsin back in May 1970, and that a dear friend, a duck hunter no less, pointed it out to me, never, and I do mean never, would I have taken the slightest interest in birding. At the time, little did I realize birding would lead me to a somewhat steady obsession for the rest of my life. Lucky me! We had come to our last stop at the Preserve. John Fussell was leading the group to the top of the mountain and what should appear before our sight but the wondrous flight of the Swallow-tailed Kite. What a glorious bird to see and only the second time I have ever seen one. And it so was close!! Clearly, this was the bird of the trip, indeed the bird of the month, and for a number of the birders in the group it was a life-bird. (Continued on page 5) LNBC Membership Dues New Members Carole & Michael Creedon 208 Shoreline Dr New Bern NC annual membership dues are $15 per person and cover the program year from September 2016 through May Your dues provide for our room rental, monthly programs and field trips, our newsletter, our holiday party and any additional projects undertaken by the club (i.e., Bob Holmes Memorial Tree and other donations). Dues may be paid at a monthly meeting, or you may send them directly to Christine Root, LNBC Treasurer, 651 Quail Road, Merritt, NC Checks should be payable to LNBC.

5 Volume 25, Issue 1 Page 5 A Few Summer Birds (Continued from page 4) Perhaps inspired, just three days later, Steve and I could be found racing along Hwy 70, heading for Statesville, NC. Actually we were heading for Lookout Shoals Lake on the Catawba River hoping to get a glimpse of the Brown Booby. Success! Another bird of the month. Maybe the bird of the year. In fact it was a life-bird for the both of us, life-bird number 516 for me. Not bad for this, the cruelest month. And just thirteen days later, Steve and I could be found racing off in the opposite direction heading east, this time heading to the Hatteras Lighthouse to catch a look of the Crested Caracara. It took a little doing, but we eventually got it (thanks to Wade, and to the scolding Grackles). I believe this was a life-bird for the state of North Carolina itself! Moving out of June and into July, it began as the second cruelest month although on July 14th we were out at Cedar Island and picked up a few beautiful Western Sandpipers. Alas, the start of the great Fall migration as shorebirds have begun to sprinkle down from the Artic, the tundra and northern Canada into the lower 48. Wow! The obsession continues. Birds & Nicotine: Two Sides First, we have the curious side: birds lining their nests with material from discarded filtered cigarette butts may actually keep out parasitic mites. In a study published in Biology Letters last year, Monserrat Suarez-Rodriguez, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, and her colleagues examined the nests of two bird species common in North America: house sparrow and house finch. Both species regularly use cigarette butts in their nests in urbanized areas. Tests using unsmoked butts had many more parasites than those with smoked butts, which contained nicotine because the cigarette smoke had passed through them. But Suarez-Rodriguez warned that there might be as-yet-unknown negative effects for the birds that go beyond the role of a mild antiparasite treatment. And this is the second, more disturbing side. The world s most widely used groupings of insecticides, the neonicotinoids, may be deadly to birds. Neonicotinoids are nicotine-like chemicals introduced in the 1990s in response to health concerns linked to older pesticides. Neonicotinoids have been implicated in the declines of pollinator populations, including bumblebees and honeybees. But the concern goes further. A single corn kernel coated with a neonicotinoid can kill a songbird, say Cynthia Palmer of the American Bird Conservancy. Even a tiny grain of wheat or canola treated with the oldest neonicotinoids called imidacloprid can fatally poison a bird. And as little as 1/10th of a neonicotinoid-coated corn seed per day during egg-laying season is all that is needed to affect production. Fortunately, these sorts of findings have neonicotinoids coming under increasing scrutiny....birds lining their nests with material from discarded filtered cigarette butts From Bird Watcher s Digest, July/August 2013