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A particularly virulent strain of avian flu has been spreading in the US. Much like the flu in humans, avian flu is cyclical and new strains may cause higher infection and mortality rates. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Center for Disease control are both carefully monitoring the situation. As of 5/9/22, there have been no cases of this strain reported in Nevada. You can check the USDA’s full list of documented cases here. The risk to humans is low, however, there has been one reported case of this strain making the jump to a human in Colorado. If you find a dead bird and would like to report it, do not handle the bird and contact Nevada Department of Wildlife for further instructions.
We will be monitoring the situation in our area and providing updates when necessary. If there is an outbreak in your area, please remove bird feeders and baths until the outbreak has subsided. Additionally, it is good practice to regularly sterilize your bird feeders and baths to avoid outbreaks of any communicable disease in your backyard flock. Check out our article on Salmonella and Responsible Bird Feeding for details on maintaining feeders.
The Nevada Arts Council has just awarded the Lahontan Audubon Society an Arts Learning Grant. Thank you, Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment of the Arts, for your support. With this grant, Lahontan Audubon will offer a series of free, online bird drawing classes with science illustrator, Christine Elder, and nature journal educator, John Muir Laws, this spring. Christine was the featured artist for the recent Winter Wings Festival in Klamath, Oregon. John Muir Laws (aka Jack) is the champion of the nature journaling movement and author/illustrator of the Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada. These amazing artists will teach us some of the tips and tricks for drawing birds in the field. Lahontan Audubon Society is excited to be able to present this new series of art classes! Please stay tuned for details. We will be posting more information on these classes on our website soon.  Thank you to everyone who participated in our recent program survey. We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us and we will be working hard make our programs align with the responses we received. See the full results below.
 Thank you to everyone who joined us for our first Field Trip Guide Workshop! We had 14 participants join in the fun, including a mix of veteran leaders and new leaders. It was such a great opportunity to exchange ideas and go birding with a great group of people. Along the way we saw Common Goldeneyes, Red-shouldered Hawks, Cedar Waxwings, American Robins, Northern Flickers, and more. If you weren’t able to join us this time, and are interested in leading or co-leading a field trip don’t worry, we will have additional opportunities to get involved. The only prerequisite to be a guide is having a passion for birding, birders of all levels are welcome. Send us an email if you are interested in learning more about leading a field trip.
The pandemic has been challenging for everyone and it has been particularly difficult for the Deaf community as wearing masks limits the Deaf ability to read lips which can be a vital communication tool. In an effort to reach out to this community, our Development Coordinator, Diane Wong-Kone, wrote a grant to support birding walks with American Sign Language interpreters. National Audubon selected our grant to receive funding and we will be planning these walks for the spring and summer and identifying ways that we can make all our trips more accessible to the Deaf community. Thanks to National Audubon for their support and congrats to Diane on receiving funds for this exciting project!
 LAS staff and volunteers were excited to join in several outreach events in the past few weeks. Education volunteers led by Alan Gubanich attended the Youth Wildlife Conservation Experience and shared our taxidermy mounts with hundreds of students. Students learned about local bird species and how to use binoculars to help them identify their avian friends. Thank you to all the volunteers who participated in the event and brought birding to our local students.
LAS staff also helped with the Rosewood Nature Study Area’s Martin Luther King Day of Service. This event invited participants to help clean up the wetlands while participating in a BioBlitz. LAS hosted a birding hotspot where we taught participants about some of the species that can be seen at Rosewood and recorded a full list of bird species that were seen that day. We counted 37 different species! Thanks to everyone who helped support our local wetlands. If you are interested in helping out with future events please fill out our volunteer interest form. |
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