Monthly Archives: February 2016

Birders Meeting- Early Bird Registration Closing!

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Lindall

Leach’s Storm-petrel by Jon Sill.

Mass Audubon’s 24th Birders Meeting is taking place on March 13th at UMass Boston. Tickets are selling fast! Early Bird prices run until February 28, so register soon to save $10. The theme of the meeting is Seabirds: Divers and Their Drivers. The program will focus on seabirds and their remarkable characteristics, adaptations, behaviors, and varied forms and functions.

A star-studded lineup of speakers will include keynote speaker, Dr. David Wingate (savior of the Bermuda Petrel), in addition to Dr. Steven Kress and Derrick Jackson (restoration of the Atlantic Puffin in the Gulf of Maine), and Sophie Webb (acclaimed artist and author).

Other speakers will discuss seabird identification techniques and research and monitoring efforts right here in Massachusetts. Don’t miss out – Register Now!

Other Birding Events

Our friends at The Connecticut Ornithological Association (COA) are hosting an event on Saturday the 19th of March in Middletown, CT. The 32nd Annual Meeting is a great opportunity to join CT’s birding community and spend the day learning from speakers including: Brad Winn “Understanding Shorebird Migration to Help Direct Conservation Action”, Neil Hayward “An Accidental Big Year” and Cameron Cox “Seawatching: The Identification of Waterbirds in Flight”. Visit the COA website for more information.

Peru 2016 – A Beginner’s Guide to the Wildest Place on Earth

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Joan W.

Black-collared Hawk by Polly Pattison

In January Joan Walsh, Dr Jon Atwood, and David Sibley led 24 explorers on the Mass Audubon Travel Program’s expedition to the Peruvian Amazon. The trip logged 640 miles on three different rivers, and combined bird lists of the participants and guides topped 200 species. From the pre-dawn calling Undulated Tinamous and the lumbering Horned Screamers (nicknamed The Peruvian Air Force by the guides), on through the exceptionally rare Black-and-white Hawk-eagle and hundreds of Sand-colored Nightjars, this trip did not disappoint.

We had the privilege of visiting two small villages, visits that helped us to build a more complete vision of how people sustain their communities in a place where the river can rise 50 vertical feet each year. Scarlet and Blue and Yellow Macaws, Hoatzin (on nest!), Long-billed Woodcreeper, and the dashing (and ubiquitous) Yellow-rumped Caciques kept us company while the river rolled by.

Dr Jon Atwood, with a pet sloth in Peru.

You needed to like heat and sun, humidity and uncertainty. Each day new species popped up as fast as we could identify them, sometimes faster, and even the local guides didn’t know which species would be next. It was exciting, rewarding, and challenging – all the things that drew us to birding in the first place. Change has met this wild place, and while it retains an air of mystery and wilderness, there is no mistaking the long arm of settlement. These were some of the most exciting days of birding and nature study we have ever had – and we encourage you to try to make this trip in the future.

Mass Audubon will run this tour again in March 2017 and November 2017. Find out where in the world we are going next!

Mass Audubon tour group, bird watching aboard the skiff, by Jon Atwood.

Hoatzin, by Joan Walsh.

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River scenery on the Mass Audubon Peru tour, by Jon Atwood.

A Tribute To Vern Laux

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Lindall

BY WAYNE PETERSEN

Vern Laux,1955-2016. Thanks to Lanny McDowell for providing this photo.

Both the world and the birding community lost a superstar to cancer with the passing of Vern Laux on Nantucket last month. Vern Laux was at once a newspaper columnist, a radio personality, an author, an educator, a tour leader, a master birder, a champion of birding and bird conservation, and a larger than life personality. Like a little boy in a giant’s body, through the years Vern’s infectious enthusiasm for people, birds, and birding never ceased to afford him a devoted following.

From his youthful days running birding trips on the outer beaches of Cape Cod for Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and driving zodiacs for cruise ships in Antarctica, to routinely making stunning birding discoveries like finding the first North American record of Red-footed Falcon on Martha’s Vineyard in 2004, and more recently establishing and organizing the Nantucket Birding Festival for the Linda Loring Nature Foundation, Vern always had an enthusiastic following and was usually at the head of the line.

Always outgoing, willing, and uniquely able to share his vast knowledge of birds with any and all who were interested (and even some that may not have been!), Vern was a virtual Pied Piper, and more than once overheard comments included remarks like, “See that big guy over there with the red knit cap on. He is both a hoot and a truly amazing birder!”, or “Vern must be bionic! How did he ever spot that bird?” To see Vern Laux at his best was to stand atop the Aquinnah cliffs on Martha’s Vineyard at first light and watch and listen as he reeled off the names of tiny migrant birds in flight by both sight and sound at seemingly any distance, or to listen as he described with Howard Cosell- like precision and humor the pursuit of a tiny warbler by a streaking Merlin. Vern could hear, see, and describe to others things that seemingly no one else around him could – he was truly a master of his craft.

Thanks in no small part to an outstanding junior high school science teacher that he encountered while growing up in Wellesley, he was early on captivated by birds – an interest he maintained with a passion for the rest of his life. To all (and there are many) who came in contact with him, or were touched by his zest for life, he will forever go down as “one of the great ones,” and he will surely be missed by all who were fortunate to know him.