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Meetings, field trips, and natural happenings in the Chenango County, New York, area.
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The Goldfinch
Volume 24, number 4, of The Goldfinch should be appearing in members' mailboxes any day. In addition to lots of bird news and updates, this issue includes some fascinating natural history notes on, among others, a pseudoscorpion in Oxford and squawroot in Bainbridge.
The newsletter also provides an updated calendar of events. Next Wednesday, December 10, our meeting will be dovted to planning for the Christmas Bird Count, scheduled for December 20; Mark Tanis will also present his slides of gas well drilling in Texas.
The Rogers Center Winter Living Celebration will be held January 10, and New York State Waterfowl Count runs January 17-25.
Our spring meetings are scheduled for April 8, May 13, and June 10.
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 9:33 PM, Thursday, December 4, 2008 |
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Field Trip: Saturday, October 11, 2008
Our field trip this week will be to the Franklin Mountain Hawkwatch, near Oneonta, NY. It looks like the weather conditions will be favorable for a good day there. The best times are following a rainy period and when winds are NNW.
It's about a 45-minute drive from Norwich. Anne and Charlene will leave at 8:30 and return in the early afternoon. Call Charlene if you would like to go: (607) 334-9112. If the weather predictions change, we will postpone the trip to another time.
You will find directions to the site and other information at the Franklin Mountain Hawkwatch website. There are experienced hawkwatchers at the site on all good days who are happy to share their knowledge and experience with visitors. You, too, can be a spotter!
It is always colder and windier on the mountain than elsewhere, so dress warmly and bring water, a snack, binoculars, and a camera. The views are fantastic!
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 2:57 PM, Thursday, October 9, 2008 |
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CBC Field Trip, September 13, 2008
Nine members of the Chenango Bird Club made a field trip to CBC member Mark Tanis’s farm in Pitcher, NY, on Saturday. Mark is a long-time birder and bird-friendly farmer who enjoys sharing his knowledge and experience with others. He met us on our arrival with juice and pastries, then explained a little about his farm and what we could expect to see.
The hay wagon pulled by one of the tractors had hay bale seats for all of us. Mark pulled us along to the varied habitats he maintains on his farm—a gravel pit with water, grassy meadows, wooded and brushy areas, hay fields, and riverside pastures.
Along the way we observed more than 30 species, most notably a Bald Eagle, Eastern Meadowlarks, a family of Northern Flickers, a Marsh Wren, a pair of American Kestrels being harassed by Blue Jays, Mourning Warblers, Savannah Sparrows, and a flock of Wild Turkeys with both adults and young. As usual, it was a great birding day at Mark’s farm.
Charlene LaFever
President
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 2:44 PM, Monday, September 15, 2008 |
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A Very Successful Field Trip!
By all accounts, Saturday's field trip was a great success. More details and more photos to come, but here's a preview of the day's delights--a perched adult Bald Eagle.
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 4:03 PM, Sunday, September 14, 2008 |
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The Chenango Bird Club: Fall Events
The new issue of The Goldfinch announces the following Fall 2008 club events:
September 10: Presentation by John Knapp
September 13: Field Trip -- Ideal Farm, Pitcher
October 8: Presentation by Rick Marsi
October 11: Field Trip -- destination tba
November 12: Show and Tell Evening
November 15: Field Trip -- destination tba
The newsletter also includes several very interesting articles about the Club's early history, along with an exciting report of a male Lazuli Bunting in North Norwich.
Want to read more? Join the Chenango Bird Club! Dues are $5 for students, $10 for individuals, and $15 for families, and can be submitted to John Knapp, PO Box 603, Oxford, NY 13830; you can also join at any of the club's regular meetings, held the second Wednesday of each month from April to December at 6:30 pm at the Rogers Environmental Center, State Route 80, Sherburne.
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 8:59 PM, Thursday, September 4, 2008 |
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July 9 Meeting and Walk
Join us tomorrow evening, July 9, at 6:00 for a potluck, brief meeting, and bird walk! We'll be meeting at Hunts Pond State Park, Hunts Road. South New Berlin, NY 13843.
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 7:47 PM, Tuesday, July 8, 2008 |
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Video of the Utica Peregrines
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Ferd's Bog
Here are some photos from our May 29 trip to Ferd's Bog. We missed some of our target birds--Gray Jay, Boreal Chickadee, Black-backed Woodpecker--but we were treated to Blackburnian Warblers and Lincoln's Sparrow. A full list from the trip will be included in the next issue of The Goldfinch.
The ritual anointing:
Who's been flaking this fallen log?
Scanning the bog:
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 3:25 PM, Tuesday, June 10, 2008 |
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Bald Eaglets in Chenango County
John Knapp provided us with this photo courtesy of DEC's Peter Nye, who took the picture while inspecting the nest.
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 4:10 PM, Friday, June 6, 2008 |
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Meet a Member!
Alison Beringer
 
A native of Canada, Alison Beringer lives in Tucson and in Hamilton, NY, where she is on the faculty of Colgate University. She holds graduate degrees from the Universities of Victoria and Illinois and from Princeton University, where she completed the Ph.D. in 2006. Alison has traveled widely in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, and has led field trips for Tucson Audubon and the American Birding Association.
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 6:26 PM, Sunday, June 1, 2008 |
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Meet a Member!
Fred von Mechow
Fred von Mechow Fred has been enjoying life at Rogers Center since 1988 as the Program Coordinator. His duties include scheduling programs, assigning staff teaching responsibilities, overseeing the intern program, teaching classes, and working on exhibits and other projects. Fred is an avid bird watcher, a member of the Chenango Bird Club, and has participated in the New Jersey Audubon World Series of Birding since 1993. When Fred can be found at home, he's usually working on remodeling or some other woodworking project.
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 9:14 PM, Saturday, May 31, 2008 |
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Fort Drum Information
It isn't that far away, really, and Fort Drum harbors some very interesting birding. For weekly updates on what's being seen, visit the Fort Drum Fish and Wildlife page on the net, and under New News click on "New Wildlife Viewing Report."
A thousand thanks to Jeff Bolsinger!
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 1:33 PM, Friday, May 30, 2008 |
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Ferd's Bog May 29
Ferd's Bog is renowned as one of the finest areas in the lower 48 to see boreal specialties. The Chenango Bird Club will head out there tomorrow morning in hopes of encountering a number of birds not easily seen elsewhere in the area.
Thursday, May 29: Meet at Rogers at 4:50 a.m. to leave at 5:00 a.m. for an early arrival. We'll spend about 2 hours birding and leave for home late morning for an early afternoon arrival in Sherburne. Bring drink, snacks, and a light lunch if you want it to eat on the way. Remember insect repellent and protective clothing and footwear. Hope for lots of sightings!
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 12:00 PM, Wednesday, May 28, 2008 |
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This Week's Events
All members, friends, and potential members:
Our field trip this Saturday is a walk around the parks in the center of Norwich. We will meet behind Howard Johnson's at 8:00 am for a walk to the nearby parks. We will distribrute our new Chenango County Checklists and packets of sunflower seed. Please join us if you can--and bring a friend!
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 8:18 PM, Wednesday, May 14, 2008 |
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Meeting Information
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas!
The Club meets at Rogers Environmental Education Center, Sherburne, on the second Wednesday of each month, April-December. Programs at 7 pm, except June-August; meet at 6:30 pm for a stroll around the diverse trails at Rogers Center. All are welcome. Call Rogers Center at 607-674-4017.
Hope to see you at our next meeting! |
Posted: 12:20 AM, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 |
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A Trip Report
Chenango Bird Club member Rick Wright has prepared a report on his April 2008 tour of Provence, "Chirps and Churches." To receive a copy by e-mail, leave a comment at any of the entries listed here: http://birdaz.com/blog/category/france-2008/ .
Woodchat Shrike, Pont du Gard, April 2008
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 9:34 AM, Wednesday, April 30, 2008 |
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Twenty-five Years of The Chenango Bird Club
The Chenango Bird Club is featured in a new article celebrating our silver anniversary--read it here!
The Chenango Bird Club welcomes YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 12:50 PM, Sunday, April 27, 2008 |
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Looking Forward
This internet age has its pluses and its minuses for the birding world, but a project like the Cornell Lab's ebird.org is only positive. Among the great new features is the ability to check out arrival and departure dates for any given geographic area, from a single birding site to a county to a state or region.
Wondering what we have to look forward to in the next few weeks? Check it out here.
The Chenango Bird Club invites YOU to enjoy the natural wonders of Chenango County and surrounding areas! |
Posted: 5:49 AM, Sunday, April 13, 2008 in Books and Other Resources for Birders |
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A New Peterson Guide
Bill Thompson III is well known in North American birding circles, both as the Editor of Bird Watcher's Digest and as a fine field companion. He is also admirably dedicated, as is his wife, the artist and author Julie Zickefoose, to educating all Americans about their natural heritage. This newest volume in Houghton Mifflin's venerable Peterson series provides the most impressive testimony yet to the couple's devotion to education and conservation.
This slim and handsomely produced volume is sure to capture the attention of not just young birders but new birders and potential birders of any age. It covers some 200 species of common eastern birds, each account illustrated with 1 or 2 almost invariably good-quality photographs, supplemented with charming drawings by Julie Zickefoose showing a characteristic behavior of each species.
Given the book's pocket format, the photos are necessarily small, but well chosen and attractive; a very few have suffered in the printing--no Gray Catbird is as green as the image on page 192 suggests. A first run-through finds very few apparent errors of identification: the White-crowned Sparrow on page 219 is a first-winter bird, not a juvenile; the green Scarlet Tanager on page 212 may well be a male rather than a female, while the Red-breasted Nuthatch on page 179 strikes me as more likely a female than a male; and the foreshortened female Picoides on page 150 is a Downy Woodpecker. None of these apparent slips affects the enormous usefulness of the book as a whole.
The species accounts are arranged in roughly taxonomic order, with some inexplicable departures that may make it harder for the new birder "graduating" to more complete guides. Each begins with a summary of field marks, both visual and behavioral, followed by a description of the most frequently heard vocalizations; I was delighted to find echoes of Peterson's own guides in those sections. Miscellaneous, more "subjective" hints are provided under the rubric "Remember," while a fun fact or behavioral oddity is set apart in an oval headed "Wow!" The book's design makes it easy for the author to pack a lot of information onto a small page--and easy for the reader to get to the important facts without delay. Habitat and range data are at the bottom of each species account, accompanied by clear maps; though the book is intended for use in the eastern half of the US and Canada, the maps depict each species' entire nearctic range north of Mexico, making them useful even for traveling young birders.
As too few of us understand, the most important part of any field guide is the front matter, and The Young Birder's Guide does an outstanding job of introducing its subject. Tips on techniques, ethical behavior, and identification criteria are carefully and simply presented. Any birder, young or old, who who takes these few pages to heart will be a better birder.
This is a great book, one highly recommended to young or beginning birders as a starter guide. And if you're an experienced birder yourself, it is even more highly recommended: buy a few and pass them around to the children in your neighborhood and your life. Thanks, Bill; thanks, Julie! |
Posted: 9:37 PM, Friday, April 11, 2008 in Books and Other Resources for Birders |
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Northern Cardinal
The familiar Northern Cardinal is a relatively recent addition to our area's avifauna.
Well into the middle of the twentieth century, this fiery feeder bird was a classic "southern species," but its range has moved north along with such other southerners as Red-bellied Woodpecker, Tufted Titmouse, and Northern Mockingbird, all of them now found in our area. |
Posted: 2:15 PM, Thursday, April 10, 2008 in Recent Sightings |
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