By Valerie Andersen The Flyaway Bird Rescue Facility is here to help, but YOU can help them too! It is June and all the baby birds are out and about! Thank you photographers for submitting the beautiful bird photos! Congratulations to our June winner, Brian Meltzner, who captured an "aw" moment of a baby Clark's Grebe riding on it's mom's back. Honorable mentions go to Judy Duffy for her photo of a Green-tailed Towhee carrying food back to its chick, and also to Deanna Peters' family of Great Blue Herons! Congratulations Brian Meltzner on winning the May 2024 bird photo of the month! Congratulations also to our finalists, Diane Killeen and Cal DeCoursey! If you have photos to share with our birding community, please check out our photo contest!
Congratulations to Brian Meltzner - our photo contest winner for March, with his amazing capture of two Red-tailed Hawks in mid-flight! Spring is here, and that means that the birds are moving northward, with some of our wintering birds heading out, new birds passing through, and our summer nesters arriving. Now is the time to go outside and check out all the bird activity! Click here to submit a photo to the April contest! Join us on March 28, 2024 at 6:00 pm at Sundance Books and Music, 121 California Avenue, for a short program on the history of Lahontan Audubon Society in honor of our 60th anniversary. LAS was founded in December 1963 by Reno physician Dr. John M. Davis, UNR Biology Professor, Dr. Fred “Fritz” Ryser, and Reno High math teacher Marge Sill. The last of the LAS founders, John M. Davis, M.D., died on May 3, 2023, at the age of 95. An avid reader and life-long learner, John amassed a large collection of books. After his death LAS received his collection of bird books from his widow, Rena Davis. In his memory, we are honored to partner with Sundance Books by making the Davis collection available for sale. Proceeds will go to the continued support and mission of the Lahontan Audubon Society.
Hello Photographers, Thank you for your submissions to last month's contest! Previously, I boasted that January might have been the toughest contest yet, but February was such a splendor of skill and color! Thank you to everyone who participated! The board has voted, and the February 2024 Photo of the Month is Lori Bellis's radiant Mountain Bluebird! Congratulations, Lori! - Jonathan Sokol Excerpt below from The Mystery of the Pinyon Jay: a bird species native to the West has declined dramatically - and we're still trying to figure out why, news article by Alan de Queiroz in the Reno News and Review, February 29, 2024.
Click to read the full story here. In the spring of 2020, I started going for hikes on a part of Peavine Mountain I had hardly ever visited before, just above the Northgate neighborhood in northwest Reno. ... I’ve become attached to the landscape—the shrubby slopes, the scattered outcrops, the pines silhouetted against strange white and orange soils—but mostly, I go there because it’s a great place to find pinyon jays. These birds look like small blue crows and, unlike other jays, usually move around in flocks. I go to follow the jays and, if I’m lucky, to sit in the middle of a flock, experiencing the strange spectacle of these noisy, gregarious birds. “They’re all picking through crevices in the bark for caches (of pine nuts) or probing the ground for caches, and there’s one watching (as a sentry), and they’re rotating through these duties … and it’s really cool to be that close to so many birds,” says Ned Bohman, from the Great Basin Bird Observatory. Every spring, hundreds of birdwatchers drive along predetermined 24.5-mile routes all over the U.S. and in parts of Canada, stopping each half-mile to count every bird they see or hear, making a total of 50 counting points per route. ...The most recent BBS report, covering 1966 through 2022, estimated that the overall number of pinyon jays fell by some 70 percent in that time. ... BBS reports, based on the efforts of thousands of community scientists, were a big part of what put pinyon jays on the radar of conservationists and agency land managers. And, according to John Boone and Ned Bohman (GBBO), community scientists will also be a vital part of the next step in the conservation of this species. “It takes all of us working on this,” said Rose Strickland, the conservation chair for the Lahontan Audubon Society. “Problems are too pervasive; everything is connected, and so we need to be more connected in the way that we approach preserving biodiversity instead of just drawing lines on a map (around protected areas). … It really takes a village.” To learn more about the community science project to map our local Pinyon Jays, please email [email protected]. For the Great Backyard Birdcount in 2024, over the weekend of February 16-19, Lahontan Audubon Society hosted 5 local field trips. Field Trip Leaders kept eBird lists from sites around Washoe County, including Boynton Slough - Dry Creek, Crystal Peak Park, Rancho San Rafael Park, Wingfield Trail, and Swan Lake Nature Study Area. Trips were led by our outstanding Field Trip Volunteer Leaders: Jeff Bleam, Ben Sonnenberg, Steven Cavros, Linda St-Cyr, and Ned Bohman. In total, 68 bird species and 3,696 birds were recorded! California Gulls made the high count at 1,000 at Swan Lake. Wintering Snow Geese and Tundra Swans were also at the lake. One Anna's Hummingbird, the only hummingbird that winters in our area was found at Crystal Peak Park. Also at Crystal Peak Park, a Merlin was spotted, along with 36 Evening Grosbeaks. Purple Finches were continuing at Rancho San Rafael Park, and also noted at Crystal Peak Park. Although normally thought of as passing through during migration, a couple of Lincoln's Sparrows were detected at Boynton Slough and Crystal Peak Park. This bird has been recorded around Reno this winter, though they are not common. The secretive Virginia Rail was heard at Wingfield Trail and also recorded at Swan Lake. Many more birds were seen on all the trips - check out the lists!
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