Thank you to our wonderful volunteers who help our birding community grow! “If you want to touch the past, touch a rock. If you want to touch the present, touch a flower. If you want to touch the future, touch a life.” --Author Unknown The Pelican-- Hummingbird and Pollinator Garden Planting at Valley Wood Waterwise Gardens10/19/2023 Date: Saturday, October 7, 2023
Place: Valleywood Park Waterwise Gardens - meet at the Gazebo, click to see map What to Bring: Gardening clothes and favorite small garden tools for planting if you have it, but not needed as Tom has supplies handy. Come and join us at our community gardens at Valleywood Park this Saturday! We will be planting California Fuschias for hummingbirds! This bright red flower grows well in our neighborhood. Lahontan Audubon Society's Vice President and owner of River School Farm, Tom Stille, is leading this effort and knows all when it comes to landscaping and gardening in our area. This planting effort is the first step to adding flowers to our hummingbird garden and there will be more opportunities to help out. This day, we will build a raised bed out of tree limbs, add live worm compost, plant, add drip irrigation, and mulch for the flowers. Learn techniques you can use in your own yard and help our wild birds thrive! Help us plant and then watch our gardens grow! Lahontan Audubon is looking for Board Members who want to help spread the joy of birding, and to support education and conservation efforts concerning birds and the environment.
Board members or Trustees serve a three year term. The terms are staggered so that each year three of the nine trustee positions are up for reelection. Trustees are term limited to serving only three consecutive terms or nine years. Two of our wonderful Trustees, Mike Goddard and Bill Fletcher, have reached their term limit. The third trustee, Linda St-Cyr, is not term-limited and has agreed to be a candidate for the upcoming election. Ordinarily the qualifications for a Trustee is membership in LAS and the willingness to faithfully serve. However, this year we have a specific need for one candidate to be willing and able to serve as the treasurer. This position does not require a degree in accounting or a CPA but does require attention to detail and the willingness to learn the Neon CRM computer program as well as QuickBooks. If you are interested in this position but have questions about what it entails, please contact Bill Fletcher at bill.fletcher@nevadaaudubon.org If you are interested in one of the two general trustee positions or have questions about serving on the Board please contact suzie.reynolds@nevadaaudubon.org. Join the Board and help steer LAS into the future! Welcome to our new Field Trip Committee Chair, Lauren Whitenack! Lauren is a PhD student at the University of Nevada, Reno studying Mountain Chickadee breeding ecology, and one of our newest Trustees. She has been interested in birds from the young age of 13 when she began volunteering at the Intermountain Bird Observatory near Boise, ID. Before moving to Reno in August 2021, she worked as a bird bander in both Idaho and Western North Carolina and conducted bird research as an undergraduate. She is currently a graduate teaching assistant for a Field Ornithology course at UNR, and enjoys sharing her passion for birds with others. Lauren is bringing a fresh energy to the field trip committee and wants to know how we can best serve you. Please fill out this short survey on what you would like to see from our field trip programs in the future. You can also join Lauren on her upcoming field trip to Rancho San Rafael or Hunter Creek Trail and thank her for coordinating our birding field trips!
Also a huge thank you to our outgoing committee chair, Jasmine Kleiber, for all the great work she has done over the past few years! We have a vacant seat on our Board of Trustees and we are looking for someone with a passion for our mission to step up. Trustees attend monthly board meetings, support strategic planning for our organization, and provide guidance to our programs. If you are interested in learning more, please contact our president, Suzie Reynolds and she will be happy to give you more information.
We are so excited to be back to our in-person monthly membership meetings and a huge thank you to Bob Goodman for kicking off the season last month. We are looking for volunteers to help host the snacks and beverages that we provide at each meeting. This would entail purchasing light snacks, and setting up the hospitality table before the start of the meeting. LAS will reimburse volunteers for the snacks they purchase and we are hoping to have different volunteers sign up for each meeting. If you are interested in helping or if you have any additional questions, please send us a message and we hope to see you at our October meeting.
Fall migration is almost upon us! We are looking for volunteers who are interested in coordinating some birding walks so we can share fall migration with more people in our community. You don’t have to be an expert birder to lead a walk, just someone who is familiar with a local birding spot and interested in learning. If you want to find out more about leading or co-leading a birding walk, please send a message to our Field Trip Committee.
We have new officers on our Board of Trustees. Huge thank you to our outgoing president, David Jickling, and outgoing secretary, Suzie Reynolds. Though neither of them will be going far! Suzie was elected as the new president of our organization and David was elected to fill the Vice President seat that has been vacant for the past year. Mike Goddard was elected to serve as secretary and Bill Fletcher has agreed to stay on as our treasurer. The rest of our board is filled out by Brendan Bucy, Rose Strickland, Bri Usdrowski, and our newest board members, Sally Bates, and Lauren Whitenack. Please join us in thanking this dedicated group of volunteers for their service. We do have some committee chair roles that we are looking to fill. If you are interested in leading any of our committees please fill out a volunteer interest form.
What is the Intermountain West Shorebird Survey?
Shorebirds represent a unique aspect of biodiversity that links isolated sites, often hundreds or thousands of miles apart, and thus, shorebirds are excellent indicators of environmental health across large and small landscapes. Inland sites in the Intermountain West are oases for our migratory shorebirds. Our collective efforts will document changes to freshwater wetlands and saline lakes over the past 30 years by recreating the last comprehensive shorebird survey of the region in 1989-1995. By combining the efforts of professional and volunteer scientists, we will collect critical information to help sustain shorebird populations into the future, which is the purpose of the Intermountain West Shorebird Survey. The project objectives are:
We need help collecting baseline site information (access points, observation locations, and potential hazards), designing routes and surveying sites. We will be providing more details on what information we need and how to collect it during our upcoming webinar sessions. Please fill out the online form below if you are interested in visiting a familiar or new shorebird site to help design surveys and count shorebirds during our migration windows (August 9th – 22nd and April 24th – 30th), any effort helps shorebirds count! Mileage reimbursement is available on a case-by-case basis. Save the dates!
Ready to get involved? We are honored to be participating as a guest at Mark Wellman Adventure Day. Mark Wellman Adventure Day is a free event for people with disabilities to try physical activities such as kayaking, cycling and now birding! The event will happen on Sunday, June 5th at Sparks Marina from 9am to 2:30pm. We are seeking volunteers for this event. These volunteers would help us with tabling, as well as showing guests how to use binoculars and spotting scopes, and taking guests on small walks where they can see the birds at the Marina, like Mallards, Cormorants and Coots. If you are interested in volunteering at this event, please send an email to contact@nevadaaudubon.org.
We are excited to announce the return of the Spring Wings Birding Festival at the Lahontan Valley Wetlands. We are working with Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, Friends of Stillwater NWR, Nevada Department of Wildlife, Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, Great Basin Bird Observatory, and the City of Fallon to host self-guided tours of Stillwater NWR, Carson Lake WMA, and the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Wetlands. We are recruiting volunteers to be stationed at these three locations and help participants spot and identify birds.
The festival is scheduled for for Saturday, 4/30, and Sunday, 5/1. Volunteers are needed for two shifts each day, 7:30-11:30 and 11:00-3:00. Please let us know if you are interested and available to volunteer. |
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