2006 Fall Meeting Highlights
The weather for the Fall meeting was perfect - a little rain during both nights, but glorious during the days. We had Hooded Warbler, Black-billed Cuckoo, Blue-headed and Philadelphia Vireo and overflights of a mature Peregrine Falcon and 5 or 6 Black Vultures. The bird list had a total of 87 species.
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Tim Keller's Friday evening program was a slide show of the birds of Central Kenya that included this Vulturine Guineafowl. Click here to see more of his photos.
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Saturday morning found us out hunting for warblers. Here we have Susan Bagby, Bill Murphy and Rob Rutledge, asked to pose this time so that they wouldn't have their faces covered by binoculars for a change.
A Bee workshop was presented by Richard Hosey. What he doesn't know about bees could fit into a single honeycomb cell, with room a-plenty for the bee. Richard has placed several hives in the vicinity of the Yellow Brick House, and the Meeting attendees enjoyed watching the swarms of industrious insects entering and departing the hives, making thousands of sorties into the nearby prairie, where they harvested nectar from a bumper crop of blooming goldenrod, asters and boneset. At one point, Richard walked over and stood in the midst of the droning hordes and invited the Members to join him; suprisingly, several intrepid attendees sauntered up and were afforded close-up views of the clots and clumps of bustling workers crowding the entrance of the hives with their freight of nectar and pollen. Amazingly, it was learned that skunks will cozy up to a hive, poke their snouts right into the entrance and snack on the living bees as they fly out; several hives had ramps in front bristling with nails to discourage such depredations. It was interesting to discover that American honey producers like Richard have been at a great disadvantage due to the flood of imported honey into the United States; the foreign honey is cheaper, but is unregulated and apt to be contaminated with compounds that the U.S. government absolutely forbids in domestic product; American honey is destroyed if found to be as tainted as the imported product that's allowed on the retail shelves. There are strong advocates for beesting therapy in the treament of certain forms of multiple sclerosis. The honeybee is still fighting a seesaw battle with the mite infestations that killed so many hives a decade ago or better; Richard opts for treating his hives with essential oils (oil of wintergreen dispersed in mineral oil) that keep the mites in check without resorting to harsh and risky chemicals. Stop by the Yellow Brick House this fall or next spring and have a look at these intriguing insect cities, and imagine the societies within.
The Forestry Workshop was led by Jayson Waterson, the forester in the district that includes Fayette County. During a very interesting hike along one of the Sanctuary trails he pointed out facts about the ages of the trees, which almost all grow on once-cleared farm fields. He described the succession we should expect, with tulip poplars gradually yielding to beeches and maples. If we want to do it, he explained how we could promote the growth of oaks, cherries and other mast-producing trees. We have three types of vines present, grape, poison ivy and Virginia creeper. The last two do not harm trees, but grape vines get high enough to shade the canopy. We might want to consider removing some of them.
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| A Little Brown Bat |
An informative program on Bats on Saturday afternoon was presented by Vicki Shepherd of a group called
Echobats. Among other bat facts, there are more than a thousand species, of which only three are vampires. None of them lives in Transylvania. The picture shows one of the two Little Brown Bats that came along and crunched mealworms. Here are some websites for learning more about bats:
www.batcon.org
www.batworld.org
www.basicallybats.org
www.batmanagement.com
www.batdetective.com.
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| Scarlett Arvin, Cypress Arvin and Lindsey Hummel inspect Gray Denzler's bird carvings. |
On Saturday evening, Gary Denzler, from the Cincinnati Zoo, did a program on Bird Training. They have trained macaws, hawks, even a Steller's Sea Eagle. One of their successes was with a Bald Eagle that could barely fly due to an injury. He was gradually trained to fly during the playing of the National Anthem at
a Cincinnati Reds baseball game. He swoops down from high up on the edge of the stadium and lands on the pitcher's mound just as the Anthem ends. Gary also brought along some of the bird carvings he does.
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| Least Tern by Michael Brown at Cane Ridge, July 2006. |
The final program on Sunday afternoon was presented by Bill McCoy, manager of the Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge and Cane Ridge Wildlife Management Area. Both of these areas are recognized Important Bird Areas. Most of his talk concerned the construction of two artificial islands for nesting Least Terns at Cane Ridge, just south of Gibson Lake. These islands are in a shallow man-man lake which gets its water from Gibson Lake. They are cleared of vegetation so they will look like sandbars.
Patoka River Important Bird Area
Cane Ridge Site Guide
Cane Ridge Important Bird Area
Dan Leach wrote the bee workshop description. The rest and unattributed photos are by Dick Patterson