President's Message
Bill Rowe
State of the organization: Maybe I’m biased, but I must say that our organization is pretty well organized. For the hugely popular BCH (Bring Conservation Home) program, Dan Pearson has his volunteer crew ready to go this month and has located an outstanding new full-time assistant; see his article below. Business is booming in the department of beginner bird walks, where we assisted the Audubon Center at Riverlands during January and February and have begun our own 2023 series with the first of the Forest Park “first Saturdays.” This will be followed by eight more at Forest Park, plus eight walks for Great Rivers Greenway, several for the St. Louis County Library system, and four more for Tower Grove Park, all thanks to the many volunteers who come out to help others learn about birds, all of it coordinated by Mary Dueren. Our longer birding field trips have been attracting lots of participants even on cold winter days, with a full schedule for the January-March season, now winding down, and another schedule shaping up well for April-June, under the guidance of Rad Widmer.
The social schedule included our annual informal get-together with Webster Groves Nature Study Society (WGNSS), followed by the annual joint meeting of the two groups hosted at Webster University (thanks to Stephanie Schroeder) with a talk by Ed Spevak, Curator of Invertebrates at the St. Louis Zoo. Internally, our Board Recruitment Committee, chaired by Dennis Martin, has been active in its search for new members and officers, with a new slate being readied for election at the Annual Meeting of all members in late April. Please watch for details from our Executive Director, Amy Weeks, who is managing that event as she manages or assists with everything else—and none more important to us than the Annual Appeal, which is closing out soon and has already surpassed its goal for this year. (If this slipped your mind, no problem: contributions are still accepted!)
Texas tour: St. Louis Audubon has just completed a birding tour of south Texas, February 1-9, organized by Naturalist Journeys and led by Pat Lueders (who works for them) and myself. There isn’t room in a Tale Feathers issue to give a day-by-day account of the many places we went and the 166 species we encountered, but a handy way to give you some sense of it is the recently-invented eBird Trip Report, viewable here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/108011. We encountered weather from gray, windy, and 40, to sunny and the low 80's, and had generally good luck throughout. As always happens, we missed some hoped-for species, but, overall, the good luck, fine views, and good company prevailed. The Trip Report will open up to our species list, with icons at the right to click for more details on each one. If you want to see the full list of sites we visited, with separate results for each, click on "29 checklists" at the top, and if you want to just look at photos, click on "91 species with photos" at the top.
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Ornithological Forecast, March 2023
March is a month of transition for birds, starting with many lingerers from winter and moving into a vanguard of early spring arrivals that accelerates through the month. Among the early arrivals are some shorebirds that are typically around in at least small numbers before the main migration in April-May; these may include Least and Pectoral Sandpipers, Dunlin, Long-billed Dowitchers, both yellowlegs, and (especially) American Golden-Plovers, which can sometimes be seen in scores or even hundreds, still in their nonbreeding plumage at this point. The migration of waterfowl, by contrast, is strong throughout March, with the passage of northbound geese already winding down but that of many ducks at its peak right now. Among the migrant passerines, this is a fine month to see sparrows, some of them winterers like White-throat, White-crown, and Swamp, others more common on migration, like Fox, Vesper, and LeConte’s, and still others arriving later in the month, the first of the summer breeding population, like Field and Chipping. Other early passerines include swallows like Tree and Barn, American Pipits, Brown Thrashers, and even a few warblers, notably the Louisiana Waterthrush along our creeks.
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Bring Conservation Home With a New Look
Dan Pearson
The original Bring Conservation Home (BCH) logo served the program very well for the first ten years. As a program develops and grows, it is good practice to periodically update and refresh the program’s “packaging” to reflect our progress.
In 2021 we began the process of updating the BCH logo. A first draft was presented to stakeholders in early 2022. After a careful review of feedback, and many, many versions and revisions attempting to reconcile the conflicting preferences of various stakeholders, we narrowed it down to a few basic options. We presented those options to stakeholders in January of this year, inviting them to vote on three different aspects of the design. We used the vote results to create a final composition reflecting all of the top choices and incorporating as many of the suggested modifications as possible. The final result was presented to, and approved by, the St. Louis Audubon Society's board of directors. At long last, we can officially announce that the Bring Conservation Home program has a fresh new look!
The new design has a wide range of variations and formats that make it much more versatile. We are extremely pleased with how easy it has been to use in a variety of backgrounds and contexts. We are incredibly grateful to Andrea Melania Rodriguez and Jason Meador for all of their work and patience on this project.
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A More Equitable Approach to Bring Conservation Home Site Visit Fees
Dan Pearson
St. Louis Audubon strives to ensure equity and inclusion in our work. For this reason, we are pleased to announce that, beginning this month, the Bring Conservation Home (BCH) program is rolling out a whole new framework for site visit fees. Very simply, depending on location, some site visits will now be free of charge while others will be available on a sliding scale. This is made possible with support from the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC).
As part of a larger effort to ensure all Missourians have access to nature in their communities, the MDC has adopted a tiered approach to focusing the department’s urban community conservation efforts in the St. Louis region. Highest priority tiers are areas which have historically experienced disinvestment, and where residents have limited access to nature.
In partnership with MDC, we are also adopting this tiered approach to do our part to ensure all St. Louis area residents can enjoy and benefit from high quality natural spaces. First, for any site visits within the Tier 1 areas (highlighted red on the map) the standard site visit fee will be completely waived. For the remainder, after a site visit, participants will be asked to contribute a suggested payment of $80 or whatever amount they feel is appropriate and affordable.
We anticipate that some will opt to contribute more than the suggested amount as a way to “pay it forward” to benefit those for whom the full $80 would be a hardship. Active members of St. Louis Audubon or any sponsoring organization such as St. Louis Wild Ones, would only be asked to contribute $40, or half of the standard fee, as always. Portland Audubon’s Backyard Habitat Certification Program, upon which BCH was modeled, adopted a similar sliding scale a few years ago and have found it to be highly successful. Our hope is that this more equitable approach will prove to be beneficial for the interconnected human communities in our region while at the same time creating much needed habitat connectivity for birds and other wildlife as well.
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Meet the new Bring Conservation Home Outreach Specialist
Shannon Callahan is a Chicago area native and graduate of the University of Illinois. She has spent the last five years working for several research, governmental, and non-profit organizations focused on ecological restoration and conservation in the Midwest. She has hands-on experience installing and maintaining native landscaping, and is especially fond of Missouri native silphium species. She is a tree-hugger at heart, and her favorite native species is the big and beautiful bur oak!
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DID YOU KNOW...
DOCTORS ARE PRESCRIBING NATURE!
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Dr. Maya Moody, MD
Dr. Moody is a Pediatrics Specialist
in Saint Louis, MO.
Nature has been known for improving mental health, physical activity and general well-being. Missouri pediatricians are working to increase children and families’ experiences in nature by prescribing nature! During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Missouri Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics partnered with Park Rx America to launch a nature prescription program as a way to combat the rise in childhood obesity and mental health concerns.
Time in nature has been shown in research to improve symptoms of anxiety, depression and ADHD. Spending more time in nature and less time on electronic screens preserves eyesight and decreases risk for vision concerns in children and youth. Playing outside in natural spaces encourages motor development, problem solving and cognition for young children. Research also shows that positive experiences in nature can lead to a lifelong interest in conservation and caring for natural resources. MOAAP has recently engaged in a partnership with the Missouri Department of Conservation around the CDC’s One Health approach and the intersection of health and nature.
The Missouri Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics is a membership organization with over 1,000 pediatric provider members across the state. MOAAP’s mission is to promote the health of Missouri’s children through advocacy, education and collaboration. Visit www.missouriaap.org.
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The Creley Memorial Conservation Grant is Open - Apply Now
The St. Louis Audubon Society has worked to positively impact birds and their habitats for over 100 years. The establishment of the Cathleen Creley Memorial Conservation Grant was made possible by a generous gift of the Creley family and is used to annually award grants that support bird conservation and education projects throughout the St. Louis region.
These grants have allowed SLAS to financially support organizations and projects that further bird conservation and education, strengthen current collaborations, and establish new partnerships that magnify our influence on bird conservation in St. Louis.
The total amount available for the 2023 grant cycle is estimated to be $6300. One or more grants will be awarded depending on the income of the fund for a given fiscal year, the quality of the grant proposals received, and the results of the grant evaluation system.
Review and download the 2023 grant application here.
Completed grant applications should be submitted no later than 5pm on Friday, March 31st, 2023.
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Join others who share your interests in nature, birds and wildlife!
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Photo Credit: Marian Brinkman |
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ST. LOUIS AUDUBON SOCIETY BOARD MEETINGS
Next meeting: Tuesday, April 11
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Please Note: Board meetings will be held by Zoom and will not meet in person until further notice. If you have an interest in joining our volunteer Board, please contact one of the officers or staff members. |
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Officers & Staff
Bill Rowe, President
Jean Favara, VP Conservation
Stephanie Schroeder, VP Education
Gail Saxton, Secretary
Amy Weeks, Executive Director
(314) 687-3942
Dan Pearson, Director, BCH
(314) 718-3967
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