Meetings 2012

January 11, 2012
George Wall - A Month in Kenya, Africa

George Wall started bird watching in April of 1997, when he went to Fort Morgan in Alabama to watch bird banding. It intrigued him so much, that he joined the Hummingbird Society and then the National Audubon Society. He put up lots of feeders in his backyard, a martin house, a bluebird house, he planted 15 blueberry bushes, put in a grape arbor and all attracted birds. When he moved to Arizona in 1999, he found there were a lot of birds there. He first joined Birders’ Anonymous, a group of birders in Sun City, and was soon the leader of that group which he did for 8 years. When the Sonoran Audubon Society came into existence, he also joined them. In 2004, he became a board member. In September of 2005, he became the editor of the monthly newsletter and in June of 2009, became the president of the Sonoran Audubon Society. He’s planned and led birding trips both short and long ones like to Alamos, Mexico. He’s a staunch conservationist.

As a world-wide bird watcher, he’s traveled around the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Galapagos Islands, Nicaragua, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala and Australia.

He is extremely active in his church – The Church of the Palms in Sun City. He is the Moderator of the church, does the cooking for them, on the Finance Board, on four different committees, does ushering and is the service leader when asked.

This program is about birds, wildlife and the people in Kenya. He spent the entire month of April 2011, in Kenya where he saw 762 species of birds and 81 species of animals. He took over 1500 pictures, but only kept 400 which he deemed suitable. There are 235 pictures in this program on 119 slides.

At 75 years old, he said this was the most grueling and taxing trip he has ever taken as it was hard keeping up with the younger group. In fact, on a couple of hikes into the mountains, he had to stay behind as it was too rough for him. He missed out on another 20-30 species of birds by not taking those hikes.

February 8, 2012
Social Time 6:30 p.m.
Meeting and Program 7:00 p.m.
Kendall Kroesen - Gardening for Birds

Kendall grew up in Southern California where his mother identified common yard birds for him, but he didn’t take up birding until after earning a BA in anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. After participating in a sea turtle conservation project in northeast Mexico, he bought a bird book and binoculars.

He practiced birding when he could during three years as a salvage archaeologist and then in graduate school at the University of California, San Diego where he earned a PhD in cultural anthropology.

He moved to Tucson and did volunteer work for the Tucson Audubon Society. He joined the staff in February 2002, and during his first four years worked with the habitat restoration program and helped improve communications, especially via the website and newsletter.

In 2006, he became Habitat Restoration Program Manager. His responsibilities included oversight of restoration work, grant writing, planning and new project implementation. Recently, his title was changed to Habitats Program Manager because, in addition to the duties above, he is helping Tucson Audubon create an urban-focused sustainability program. In this program, Tucson Audubon is working with businesses, homeowners and landscape designers to better define the characteristics of urban landscapes that make them ecological sustainable and useful for declining populations of birds.

He attended the Hog Island Audubon Chapter Leadership Training in 2008, and there he met our own Karen LaFrance which is how we knew we wanted him for a speaker.

Tonight's program is not simply to talk about plants that attract wildlife, but about the general principles of landscaping that make them ecologically more sustainable and supportive of birds. He will talk a little about the Tucson Audubon programs and how they’re trying to orient them more toward urban populations. There are a variety of ecological issues that we have in our urban areas (declining birds, energy use, carbon footprint, water, non-point source pollution, etc.). These issues can be addressed through landscaping. He will introduce some basic principles and show example landscapes with a scorecard as to how well they measure up to the principles. He’s not a landscape designer and he makes the point that the principles he gives are generalized and don’t result in any one aesthetic approach, but can be used by landscape designers in creating a range of different landscape aesthetics.

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March 14, 2012
Social Time 6:30 p.m.
Meeting and Program 7:00 p.m.
David and Diane Reesor—Australia

The names of David and Diane Reesor should be familiar to you as last year they gave us a program on the Birds of Bhutan and one on Botswana. If you haven’t seen one of their programs, now is your chance.

They are professional photographers who are well traveled having been in more than three dozen countries. Their skills as photographers of wildlife and scenic beauty are truly remarkable. Both consider themselves to be very fortunate to have photographed in many of the world’s special places and they both enjoy sharing their love of travel and photography by giving programs such as this one. David has also co-authored a book "Predator – Life and Death in the African Bush" with African safari guide Mark Ross.

This program is on Australia and they spent six weeks there in September, 2011. Five of the weeks were in the Outback at cattle ranches and tented safari camps. They also spent three days with an Aboriginal family on their homestead. During this trip they also visited Sydney, Perth and the Margaret River. They used vehicles and short aircraft trips to virtually circle Australia counterclockwise.

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April 11, 2012
Social Time 6:30 p.m.
Meeting and Program 7:00 p.m.
Our Members - Adventures in Bird Watching

This month’s program is an unusual one—it’s about our members and what we do in our chapter. Watching this program, I think you’ll get a better idea of what we are about. Using photographs supplied by members or ones I took at various functions, you will learn what the Chapter and its members do. This program was designed for you our members. In it we have over 115 people pictured. Some of you submitted pictures or articles which are included under “Members Input”. In order to get as many people as possible in this program, I took photos from my albums that go all the way back to 2001 and put them into this program. It is broken down into eight parts.
1. Members Input
2. Important Bird Areas
3. Tres Rios Nature & Earth Festivals
4. Annual Picnics
5. Retreats
6. Special Events
7. Bird Trips
8. Spotlighted Members