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Meetings

Meetings

Monthly Meetings are held every fourth Tuesday, August through May, 6:30 p.m. (social) 7:00 p.m. – meeting begins. Monthly meetings are held at the Moana Nursery Landscape and Design Center, 1100 West Moana Lane, in Reno. Moana Nursery is on the southwest corner of Lakeside Drive and West Moana Lane; the Landscape and Design Center is a separate building, located on the west side of the parking lot (not in the nursery shop itself). We look forward to seeing you there!

August 23, 2011 - Carl Lackey, Nevada Department of Wildlife -- Bears of Nevada: Managing a Charismatic Omnivore

Carl Lackey is a wildlife biologist with the Nevada Department of Wildlife. He has been with NDOW since 1993 and in his current position, managing bear-people problems since 1996. Carl will start with a brief background on black bear biology and a discussion of its historic vs current range. Then he will give a history of black bear management in Nevada including aversive conditioning, Karelian Bear Dogs, research and hunting. Join us for a lively and informative presentation about an animal that has been the subject of considerable controversy during the past year.

September 27, 2012 - Tom and Ann Howell - Birds and Mammals of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

Tom and Ann Howell will show highlights of their 13-day trip along the eastern portion of South Africa up to the Mozambique border in September 2010. Areas visited included Mkuze, Tembe, Ndumo and Hluhluwe/Umfolozi Game Reserves in addition to St. Lucia Wetlands and Phinda Private Game Reserve. Never heard of these places? Well, join us this evening to discover something new. Along with the usual lion, elephant, hippo, giraffe, etc, sightings, Tom and Ann also encountered cheetah, white rhino, suni and nyala antelope and over 200 bird species -- providing a visual delight for us to enjoy.

October 25, 2012 - Gary Cottle - Dept. of Defense Partners In Flight Program

The US Department of Defense (DoD) manages nearly 30 million acres of land, air, and water resources across hundreds of installations. These lands represent a critical network of habitats for birds offering migratory stopover sites for resting and feeding. The DoD Partners In Flight (PIF) program consists of a cooperative network of natural resources management personnel from military installations across the US. Gary Cottle works at NAS Fallon and manages the natural resources on 240,000 acres of Navy Training areas in Churchill County. In this presentation Gary will tell us about the work he and the US Navy is doing in Fallon and other locations in Idaho and Utah to enhance and preserve habitat for wildlife, especially birds.

January 24, 2012 – Dr. Thomas Albright - "Birds and a Changing Climate: Can They Beat the Heat?"

Dr. Tom Albright directs the Laboratory for Conservation Biogeography in the Department of Geography at the University of Nevada here in Reno. Tom and his students study the effects of climate change and extreme weather on birds and other animals and plants. In recent work, they've used data collected by volunteer bird observers and space-borne satellites to show how different groups of birds can respond in diverse ways to heat waves, droughts, and other weather extremes. Tom will discuss how, unfortunately, birds in Nevada and neighboring states seem most likely to decline following heat waves. Tom is working to try to better understand the mechanisms behind the declines, the impacts on populations, and the ability of conservation networks to provide refuge. Join us for a very thought-provoking hour.

February 28, 2012 - Carol Grenier – Penguins and Wildlife of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean

Carol Grenier will share close up photos of the incredible diversity of sea birds and wildlife that inhabit the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island, and the Antarctic peninsula, as well as the stunning scenery. On South Georgia Island alone, one location was home to a quarter of a million king penguins nesting on a narrow strip of shoreline. Carol is a retired civil engineer, formerly with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Carson City ofGice. Join us for albatrosses, penguins, elephant seals and more.

March 27, 2012 Bird Identification Panel - Round 5

If you missed the Bird ID Panel these last 4 years you missed one of the highlights of the seasons. Members of the audience consistently say they learn so much, and have so much fun, that they want to do it again. Consequently our panel of "experts" have agreed to return on March 27 and once again try to identify those photos of birds submitted by you, our LAS members. So, if you have any decent photos of birds that you'd like to submit (preferably digital), send them to Alan Gubanich at renopopop@pyramid.net (or call him at 857-0191). Alan will compile them into a Powerpoint presentation and show them to the panel one by one. Then we will all sit back and once again see if our local experts can agree on the species identification, and explain why they think as they do. Here's another chance for all of us to learn some of the secrets of bird ID!

NOTE: Here are the rules for photo submissions!

Members of the audience and the panel members all agree that they would prefer to NOT have photos of exotic or non-native birds. So please confine your submissions to species that would normally be found in the Nevada/California area (or at least be common to most of North America). The plan is to make the evening a good learning session for those of us who would like to discover the "secrets" of bird ID. That doesn't mean you can only submit photos of easy birds. Difficult species are definitely in demand, too. Otherwise, how would we improve our birding skills?

SO: If you submit any photos, please accompany them with your name and a date and location for each photo. If you don't know exact details, approximations will be OK (ex: late April on the northern CA coast; or, early February in my yard in south Reno; etc.). THANKS. And come join us on March 27 for another fun night - Bird ID Panel: Round 5

April 24,2012 - Will Richardson – Great Basin and Sierra Nevada Odonates 101

They have wings, they fly, they have brilliant colors, but they’re not birds! They’re odonates! (Huh? -- dragonflies and damselflies, to use their common names). Dr. Will Richardson, co-founder and co-executive director of the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science (TINS), has been studying the natural history of the Lake Tahoe region since 1994. In addition to working on a status and distribution guide to Tahoe's birds, he has also been studying the region's colorful dragonflies and damselflies. Many of you will remember Will as one of the “experts” on our Birding ID Panel. In this presentation he will talk about the natural history of odonates and give us a primer on how to identify the many different dragonflies and damselflies of the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada, illustrated with lots and lots of photographs.

May 22, 2012 - Sharon Shafer - The Art of Nature: Images from the Wildlands of Southern Nevada

Sharon K Schafer is an accomplished fine artist and photographer. Through her photographs, paintings, and field sketches Schafer invites us to explore the stunning natural beauty of southern Nevada’s wildlands. Southern Nevada is a land of great contradictions and contrasts. It is at once austere, enchanting, and secretive. It is a land of mystery…a land of contrasts and contradictions…a land of great beauty and little rain. A glimpse of the hidden beauty and grace of nature can change a viewer. By looking at these images Sharon hopes the viewer comes away with a different perspective - no longer seeing the Public Lands of southern Nevada as a desert wasteland, but rather as a place of unparalleled natural beauty and diversity that is deserving of our care and concern.