Blackbrook Audubon Society promotes conservation and
restoration of ecosystems with emphasis on birds and habitat
through education and advocacy within Ohio's Ashtabula, Lake
and Geauga counties and adjacent communities.
Blackbrook Audubon
continues to collect used inkjet and laser
toner cartridges to recycle. The
cartridges we need have a manufacturer’s
name on them and have not been previously
recycled. Anything that says
“compatible with” or “not OEM” are not
acceptable.
Please bring your used cartridges to any
Blackbrook program, bird walk or field trip.
We collect these until we have a minimum of
25 to ship to Collect, Inc. We
appreciate the opportunity to turn “trash
into cash” to benefit Blackbrook’s mission
of conservation and education.
UPDATE
Printer Ink
and Toner Cartridge Recycling
I
am so excited to report that Blackbrook
Audubon earned $60 from Collect, Inc. by
gathering used inkjet and laser toner
cartridges. Isn’t it amazing to think
not only were we able to earn money by
collecting these items, but if not for
our efforts, those items would have
otherwise gone into a landfill?
Let’s keep up the good work! Please
continue to bring your used inkjet and
laser toner cartridges to Blackbrook
programs, field trips, and IBA walks or
make arrangements to drop them off with
any board member. Remember, we can
only turn in OEM (original equipment
manufacturer) cartridges. Thank you.
If you have any
questions, please contact Mary Ann Wagner at
maryannelizebeth@aol.com.
The City of Mentor, Ohio broadcasts on the local Mentor
Channel an expose of people and places around the Mentor
area called "Around Town". They did a very nice
segment on Blackbrook Audubon Society. Click the
play button above to see the segment. It includes an
interview with Mary Ann!
Best Places to Birdwatch in Northeast Ohio
Spring
(migrating
warblers are everywhere!)
AshtabulaCounty -
Greenway Trail
GeaugaCounty -
Swine Creek Reservation, Geauga Park
District, Middlefield
Eldon Russell
Park, Geauga Park District, Burton
LakeCounty -
Headlands Beach dunes area, Mentor
Chagrin
RiverPark,
Lake
Metroparks,
Willoughby
Summer
Ashtabula
County - Conneaut
Harbor,
Conneaut (for shorebirds)
Geauga
County -
Headwaters
Park,
Geauga Park District, Huntsburg
East Branch Reservoir, Geauga Park
District, Claridon
Frohring Meadows, Geauga Park
District, Bainbridge
Each year, Blackbrook raises money
for local educational programs through our annual Bird-a-thon
covering May 15th through May 23rd.
The Bird-a-thon is similar to most "athons" in that teams
of people observe how many species of birds they can
find during a 24 hour time period.
Most of the money
raised goes towards supporting local classrooms with
Audubon Adventures Curriculum kits.
Last year Blackbrook
supply to over 75 classrooms thru Holden Arboretum and the
Nature Scopes program at the Geauga Park District. Each
Audubon Adventures kit can cost up to $50.00 each.
Please consider donating online or through one of our
elected officers / teams.
Donate to Blackbrook Audubon
Society
Robert Bateman Book Raffle
Blackbrook Audubon will begin selling
tickets at our January meeting to win an autographed 1985
first edition copy of "The World of Robert Bateman".
Tickets are $1 each or 6 chances for $5. A book similar to
this one listed on Amazon.com for $95.
The drawing will be held at our June
picnic at The Holden Arboretum. The winner need not be
present to win. All proceeds will help purchase Audubon
Adventures for the classrooms sponsored by Blackbrook. If
you are interested in purchasing a ticket or helping sell
tickets, please see any board member for details or send
email to blackbrookaud@aol.com or call Mary Ann at
216-990-4245.
All programs are free and open to the public.
Everyone is welcomed!
IBA Monitoring Continues
IBA WALKS
Join
us for bird walks at Beaty Landing.
This 54-acre
wooded parcel in Painesville encompasses 3,300 feet of
frontage on the Grand River.
The Walks begin Sunday, May 9 at Lake Metroparks Beaty Landing
and continue every 2nd
and 4th Sunday (at 8 a.m.) and 3rd
Wednesday (at 7 p.m.). Admission is free. Meet at 417 E.
Walnut St., Painesville.
Everyone who is interested in lending
their eyes and ears, meet at the parking lot at 417 East
Walnut Street (State Route 84), Painesville, OH 44077.
Jim Connor photographed this Scissor-tailed Flycatcher at
Mentor Beach Park on 7/23/10. Scissor-tailed Flycatchers
are a western bird that usually comes no further east than
Missouri. Jim believes this is a first for Lake County
Ohio. His research revealed there is only one record in
A Field Book of Birds of the Cleveland Region (3rd
Edition) and Peterjohn says there are 10
records for the entire state as of 2001! The most
recent sighting was on May 11 ,2008 according to the Ohio
Birds Records but it doesn't say where it was seen but Jim
assumes this was the same sighting. Because of its
rarity, this is an exciting find!
Carol
Skinner photographed this Cliff Swallow just off Kile road
in Geauga County Ohio in July. She and Bill Cotton
noticed up to 4 adults flying in and around the area of
the nest.
A
few warbler shots taken at Headlands on May 14th,2010 by
Sally Isacco. In order shown below: Black Billed Cuckoo,
Blackburian Warbler, Cape May Warbler, Palm Warbler
Jim Connors photographed this Purple Gallinule that was
reported at Columbia Reservation in Lorain County. This is
a rare occurance in Ohio.
"Our Eagles" at the nest off of State Route 44 in the
Mentor Marsh taken from SR 44 by Bob Bartok
Roger Beuck found this male Hooded Merganser X Common
Goldeneye hybrid on the East 72nd street field trip
February 21, 2010 in Cleveland.
Found this cute little fellow
at Chagrin River Park today. My first one this winter.
Sally Isacco
I was out at Chagrin River
Park and this immature Cooper's Hawk flew in to say
hello! The Rusty Blackbird was there last week on
Thursday, January 21st. Sally Isacco
Roger Beuck
photographed this Pileated Woodpecker during the Christmas
Bird Count with Jim McConner at Mentor Lagoons on Dec. 20,
2009.
&
Blackbrook Audubon Society
FROM the DESK of the
PRESIDENT
by
Becky Thompson
btkingfisher@yahoo.com
No matter who you are or what your
computer abilities are you probably have heard of
internet buzzwords like facebook, twitter and blog. Many
people of all ages, organizations and non-profits are
using these internet tools to connect people with
similar interests. Blackbrook is no exception. These
tools are helping Blackbrook reach out to larger
communities as well as connect local communities to our
chapter.
A few years ago I went to an Audubon
Ohio conference in Columbus. One of the sessions was
dedicated to setting up a chapter blog. A "blog" is an
abbreviated version of "weblog," which is a term used to
describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of
information. Blogs also allow users to interact with
each other via comments. After the session I had this
great idea of starting a Blackbrook blog focusing on
northeast Ohio nature. The blog can be found at
http://neohionature.blogspot.com/ . It is maintained
by our Education Chair, Julie Dougherty. She posts
different northeast Ohio nature topics and welcomes
viewer ideas, suggestions and photos. Check it out!
In addition to blogging, Blackbrook also
has a Facebook fan
page. Facebook is
a social networking service that allows people to
connect with friends, co-workers, and others who share
similar interests or who have common backgrounds.
Through Facebook
individuals and organizations can get Blackbrook updates
/ reminders on monthly events and post local bird
sighting, hotspots and photos. It is free and easy to
set up. If you haven’t done so already, sign up for an
account at
Facebook.com. Become a fan by searching on
Facebook for
Blackbrook Audubon Society.
YOUR HELP NEEDED TO
RESPOND TO THE OIL SPILL CRISIS
Audubon has been deluged by
requests and registrations from volunteers seeking to
respond to the growing oil spill crisis in the Gulf of
Mexico. There are many ways to help, but now birders can
provide vital information to aid the short and long term
response.
Audubon is working with the Cornell
Laboratory of Ornithology to recruit citizen scientists to
help document bird distribution at Gulf coast sites, and
the effects of the oil spill.
We encourage birders along the Gulf
coast to record their observations of birds and submit
this information to
www.ebird.org, a real-time,
online checklist program. This vital documentation of the
location and abundance of birds will help us identify high
priority areas for protection and restoration as the oil
comes ashore. Documenting site use by birds as the
situation evolves will also help Audubon and Cornell
scientists assess the effects of this spill on Gulf coast
habitat. This is critical to providing a sound foundation
for restoration and long-term protection.
The eBird team is developing tools
that will allow us to feed live data from birders into
educational material on the spill.
Your efforts can make an
important contribution. Please help!
Note: Be sure that your
observation activities pose no danger to nesting birds and
other wildlife, or to yourself. Please do not disturb
birds or damage habitat when surveying birds. It is
critical that birders stay out of nesting areas for
plovers, shorebirds, terns, wading birds and other
colonial nesters. Counting them from a distance can still
provide valuable information on the importance of these
sections of the gulf coast. And for your own protection,
leave the area at once if you smell or see oil.
For the initiative protocol and
directions on signing up for ebird, go to:
When we founded this
organization thirteen years ago we vowed we would
never print T-shirts, and we promised we would
stay out of politics. Well.....we haven't printed
any T-shirts yet............but
today our topic is urgent, and so we must trespass
our own boundaries. The topic today involves the
fate of our state's nature preserves.
Please take a moment to
ponder all that has been accomplished by the Arc
of Appalachia... Since our inception thirteen
years ago, we have purchased over 65 properties,
and 3200 acres of life-drenched bio-diverse native
landscapes - primarily with private philanthropic
dollars. Yet such work is only supplementalto what can and should be
accomplished with state tax dollars.
The Ohio Division of Natural
Areas and Preserves currently oversees an
astounding 134 public nature preserves
in our state, stewarding
30,000 acres,
run by some of the finest conservation
professionals we could ever have the pleasure to
work with. Most of these preserves are open to the
public, free of charge, with well maintained
systems of hiking trails.
Can you imagine a
scenario in which an entire Division disappears?
It's hard, but it's important to try. Due to state
money shortages, The Department of Natural
Resources (ODNR) has been forced to swallow many
budget cuts over the last few years. When the last
round of news concerning financial deficits hit
ODNR this week, here was their reluctant response.
Fiscal Year 2010
(beginning next week) a 30% cut in in the
Division's budget
Fiscal Year 2011
(beginning July 1, 2010) ZERO
FUNDING for the
Division of Natural Areas and Preserves
The
proposed budget figures can be found by clicking
Here.
DNAP's
figures are in the PDF-link at the bottom of the page:
"Balance Sheet by Line Item" and near the top of page
7 of that PDF.
It is a
large document but the message for DNAP is clear: for
less than 2 million dollars a year, the Ohio natural
areas program could be saved: 134 public nature
preserves, 30,000 acres. Back in the seventies the
founders of the ARC worked at ODNR when the Division
of Natural Areas was born in the cradle of the
environmental movement. The founders were proud to
bear witness to Ohio's new bold conception. Shall we
now bear the shared burden of watching its demise?
If you care about wilderness,
about biodiversity, about the native landscape that
once covered Ohio, please act by contacting your
legislators and governor. The Division only has one
chance to survive. In addition, please email or
call the budget conference committee members directly.
If the public doesn't
respond with a loud and collective outcry, the
Division of Natural Areas and Preserves will soon be
gone. Over thirty years in the making,
an entire division of trained botanists, preserve
stewards, maintenance staff, and information line
people. All of them gone. Here are the conference
committee members who are working on the budge for
2010 and 2011.
The conference committee members
are:
Senator Mark Wagoner, Senate
Building, Room #129, First Floor, Columbus, Ohio
43215, Telephone: 614/466-8060 Email: SD02@senate.state.oh.us Senator Dale Miller, Senate
Building, Room #048, Ground Floor, Columbus, Ohio
43215. Telephone: 614/466-5123 Email: SD23@maild.sen.state.oh.us
Senator John Carey, Senate
Building, Room #127, First Floor, Columbus, Ohio
43215, Telephone: 614/466-8156 Email: SD17@senate.state.oh.us
Representative Vernon Sykes, 77
S. High St, 13th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215-6111.
Phone: (614) 466-3100. Fax: (614) 719-6944 Email: district44@ohr.state.oh.us
Representative Ron Amstutz, 77
S. High St, 10th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215-6111,
Phone: (614) 466-1474. Fax: (614) 719-0003 Email: district03@ohr.state.oh.us
Representative Jay P. Goyal, 77
S. High St, 14th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215-6111,
Phone: (614) 466-5802, Fax: (614) 719-3973 Email: district73@ohr.state.oh.us
We end this letter by giving credit where credit is
due. Although donors have been the Arc's primary
source of land acquisition money, the Division of
Natural Areas has often assisted the Arc by
supplying 25% of our acquisitions money through the
purchase of a conservation easements on exceptionally
botanically-significant sites. In addition, the Arc
has benefitted greatly from tax supported Clean Ohio
funding. Non-profits don't thrive in a vacuum. They
thrive in partnership.
We are a local chapter of the National Audubon Society.
Program meetings are the the third Tuesday of the month. Field
trips are usually held on the third weekend.
Blackbrook
Audubon depends on volunteers to help us carry out our
mission.
Project FeederWatch Benefits Birds and
People Connection with nature promotes wellness
Ithaca, NY-More than 100 studies have
shown that getting closer to nature reduces stress and
promotes a feeling of well-being in children and adults. So
, filling feeders and counting the birds that visit may be
just what the doctor ordered! For more than 20 years, that’s
what participants in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s
Project FeederWatch have been doing-benefitting themselves
and the birds.
Last year Blackbrook
supply to over 75 classrooms thru Holden Arboretum and the
Nature Scopes program at the Geauga Park District. Each
Carol
Skinner photographed this Cliff Swallow just off Kile road
in Geauga County Ohio in July. She and Bill Cotton
noticed up to 4 adults flying in and around the area of
the nest.
