Photo credit: Dana Nelson, Cattail Marsh, December 18, 2018
You are welcome to attend monthly meetings, featuring speakers on birding and natural history topics, and including a delicious member-provided evening meal -- with desserts! Our monthly field trips are fun and educational, and focus on locations along the coast, marshes, prairies, and forests of the area.
Annual Meeting
Thursday November 16, 2023 7:00 p.m.
Garden Center, Tyrrell Park, Beaumont
Your Favorite Bird Pictures
Dr. Harlan Stewart has again volunteered to prepare all photos submitted in advance into a Powerpoint presentation. The contributors of the pictures are encouraged to talk briefly about their pictures telling where they were taken etc. Contributions should be no more than about 10 pictures. The pictures should be bird related and have been taken in the last two years, but do not need to be exhibition quality, especially if the subject is especially interesting for any reason.
In order to prepare a combined presentation, we will need to have the pictures by Monday morning November 13. They can be emailed as attachments to Harlan at hstewartmail@gt.rr.com; If necessary, send several separate emails. The pictures can to compressed to about 50 percent of original to reduce the number of emails needed, but if you are not easily able to compress them, just send them without compression. If you cannot send them to Harlan by May 16, we may be able to show pictures you prepare yourself if they are on a flash drive, and are in the Powerpoint format. We much prefer advance submission, and, depending on how many are submitted, we might not have time to show many or even any that are not submitted in advance. Please come early to work out any kinks if you want to do anything other than show still pictures and talk about them.
We plan to have the doors open no later than 6:00 p.m., the meeting will start at 7:00 p.m. sharp.
Saturday November 18, 2023.
Field Trip to West Jefferson County.
In recent years, this has been one of our most successful field trips. The area is well known for its birds of prey, which in past years have included Bald and Golden Eagles, Crested Caracaras and White-tailed Hawks in addition to the more "expected" Red-tailed Hawks, Northern Harriers, and American Kestrels. In some years we have seen White-tailed Kites and Merlins. However, it is possible that the severe drought, only partially mitigated by the rain in the current week, has affected the food supply of the raptors, possibly causing them to forsake their normal winter territories for ones with more promise. Early indications are that American Kestrels, Northern Harriers and Red-tailed Hawks are present in good numbers (for the first 10 days of November). The area is well known as the wintering ground of what has become a large (about 1,000 strong) flock of Sandhill Cranes, but we have no reports of its arrival yet. The area is also usually one of the best places to see sparrows in the area, but sparrows still seem scarce this year. November 18 is almost as early in November as the “Saturday following the third Thursday” can be, so we hope that many of the winter residents may be en route and will arrive this week!
We recommend stopping at the Stuckey’s at the intersection of IH-10 and FM 365 (on the short stretch of two-way service road of IH-10 - north side accessed from IH-10 westbound or FM 365) to use the facilities and purchase any snacks you need. (Facilities are non-existent in the area except on IH-10 and US 90.) Then meet at 8 a.m. at the intersection of FM 365 and Johnson Road (on the “north/west” side of Johnson Road at that intersection) – about 10 minutes driving time from the meeting point. From the intersection of IH-10 and FM365 in Fannett, proceed along FM 365 (towards Nome) for about six miles. Shortly after you emerge out of the woodlands, South China Road goes to the right (east then north) and immediately afterwards, on the left, is Johnson Road. Contact Field Trip chair Steve Mayes, gtaudubon@aol.com for further information. This will be largely a "car birding" trip, car-pooling desired.