cheyenne – high plains audubon society flyer · 2016. 10. 17. · healthy places for people:...
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Flyer Cheyenne – High Plains Audubon Society Chartered by the National Audubon Society since 1974
Serving southeastern Wyoming Audubon members
Officers and Committee Chairs
Barb Gorges, President—307-634-0463,
Dennis Saville, Vice president—
307-632-1602, [email protected]
Donna Kassel, Secretary—307-634-6481 Chuck Seniawski, Treasurer, 307-638-6519, [email protected]
Jack Palma, Audubon Rockies liaison—
Pete Arnold, Audubon Rockies liaison
Greg Johnson, Bird Compiler—
307-634-1056, [email protected]
Conservation—Vacant
Belinda Moench, Education—638-8257
Field Trip—Vacant
Historian—Vacant
Mark Gorges, Newsletter, Habitat Hero pro-
gram—307-634-0463, [email protected]
Art Anderson, Important Bird Areas—
307-638-1286
Wanda Manley, Member at Large
Membership—Vacant
Barb Gorges, Programs—
307-634-0463, [email protected]
Lorie Chesnut, Hospitality, Webpage
The CHPAS Flyer is published monthly as a benefit of chapter membership. Submissions are welcome. The current issue is available online at www.CheyenneAudubon.wordpress.com.
Please become a CHPAS member—Send $12 and your name and mailing address to the chapter. Include your e-mail address to get your newsletter digitally to save re-sources and see the photos in color. All chap-ter memberships expire Aug. 31.
Cheyenne-High Plains Audubon Soc.
P.O. Box 2502
Cheyenne, WY 82003-2502 www.CheyenneAudubon.wordpress.com
Wyobirds e-list - Subscribe, post and/or read interesting sightings: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-HOME.exe?A0=WYOBIRDS.
August 2017
August 26—Field Trip: Arapaho National Wildlife
Refuge 7 a.m. We will leave from the Lions Park, Children’s Village parking
lot. The drive is about 2 hours thru Laramie and south just past Walden,
CO. There is a visitors’ center, hiking trail and driving tour. Bring a
lunch, water, and clothing appro-
priate for the weather. We should
be back to Cheyenne by 3 p.m.
Please call Mark at 307-
634-0463 to register for the trip
so that we can let you know of
any changes due to weather,
fires, or other problems.
August 25—Cheyenne Country Club Survey 7 a.m. Contact Chuck Seniawski if you wish to take part or be on the email notice
list: 307-638-6519. Anyone is welcome to join the group, but you must register with
Chuck by the week before the survey so that he can make arrangements with the
Country Club.
August 29—Board Meeting 7 p.m. Windflower Room, Laramie
County Library, 2200 Pioneer Ave. If you have ideas or suggestions for the coming year, or if you would just
like to participate, come to the meeting. Everyone is welcome.
August 31—September 3—Yampa Valley Crane Festival. Registration is now open for the sixth annual Yampa Valley Crane Festival
to be held in Steamboat Springs and Hayden, CO. The complete schedule for the 2017
festival and registration are posted at www.coloradocranes.org.
September 19—First Program of the season 7 p.m. Laramie Coun-
ty Library. Watch for information in the September newsletter.
Sep. 24—Field Trip: Help us knock down burdock in Curt Gowdy
State Park at 8 a.m. We will leave from the Lions Park Children's Village parking lot. Carpooling
may be available. Or you can meet us at the Curt Gowdy Visitors Center at about
8:30. Finish by 1 p.m.
Bring water and your lunch. Bring the following, if you have them: 5 gallon
plastic bucket, pruners/nippers, long-sleeved shirt (burs will stick to flannel, fleece
and sweatshirts), long pants (many burdock plants are among shrubs and trees), and
boots (burs stick to athletic shoes). Wear a hat to keep burs out of hair.
Please contact Mark & Barb for more information, 307-634-0463, and to be
on the list of participants to be notified of any change in plans due to weather.
September 26—Board Meeting 7 p.m. Sage Room (2nd floor),
Laramie County Library, 2200 Pioneer Ave.
September 29—Cheyenne Country Club Survey 8 a.m.
Photo from the wildlife refuge 2015 by Mark
Chapter renewal letters in the mail this month!!!
Chapter Conservation and Education Grants—See
chapter web page at: https://cheyenneaudubon.wordpress.com/.
Grants available up to $500 for the purpose of conservation, edu-
cation, scholarship, and community outreach.
NEW! Audubon Adventures Classroom Kits—Birds,
Bees, Flowers & Trees" is the newest Audubon Adventures
learning kit for grades 3-5. Designed to provide students with a
well-rounded understanding of the interconnection of natural
systems, the resources explain the functions of birds, bees, and
native plants in our ecosystem.
The kits cover Native Plants, Bird Migration, and Insect
Pollinators. Kits require no previous knowledge on the topic and
can be put to use in the classroom immediately. For those of you
participating in the Plants for Birds program, you may be particu-
larly interested in the new Audubon Adventures “Plants Are for
the Birds” edition.
Students will learn why plants are considered the foun-
dation of life on planet Earth and how every creature (large or
small, terrestrial or aquatic) requires plant life to grow and thrive.
For information on how to order, please call 800-340-6546 or
email [email protected]. Additional free
teacher resources can be found online at audubonadven-
tures.org. Use the grant, above, to purchase a kit.
Chapter Board of Directors—Interested in helping to
make the chapter function? See our list of officers and board
members on the left side of the front page. If you would like to
help with any of those jobs, contact Barb Gorges at 307-634-
0463 or at [email protected].
Chapter Patches—We still have chapter
patches available for $10 each. Talk to Mark at our next function.
Chapter and Audubon News
Cheyenne Country Club survey, August 1 by Chuck Seniawski
Aug 1, 2017 7:00 AM - 8:30 AM
Protocol: Traveling (1.0 mile)
Comments: 61 degrees, mostly sunny,
calm winds. Art Anderson, Richard Gil-
bert, Mark Gorges, Jerry Johnson and
Chuck Seniawski. We walked the route
this month.
20 species (+1 other taxa)
Canada Goose 1
Mallard 24
Pied-billed Grebe 1
Double-crested Cormorant 25
American White Pelican 3
Black-crowned Night-Heron 2
Osprey 1
Swainson's Hawk 1
American Coot 1
Eurasian Collared-Dove 2
Mourning Dove 3
Northern Flicker (Red-shafted) 7
Black-billed Magpie 1
American Crow 13
swallow sp. 4 Seen in silhouette only.
"Squared-off" tails. Likely Cliff
or Northern Rough-winged Swallows.
Red-breasted Nuthatch 1
Common Yellowthroat 1
Red-winged Blackbird 1
Yellow-headed Blackbird 3
Common Grackle 1
House Sparrow 4
American White Pelican Photo by Mark Gorges
Habitat Heroes—Benefits of Native Plants from Kittitas Audubon Society, Washington State
Low maintenance: Once established, native plants generally require little maintenance. Beauty: Many native plants offer beautiful showy flowers, produce abundant colorful
fruits and seeds, and brilliant seasonal changes in colors, from the pale, thin greens of early spring, to the vibrant yellows and reds of autumn. Healthy Places for People: Lawns and the ubiquitous bark-mulched landscapes are notorious for requiring profuse amounts of artificial fertilizers and synthetic chemical pesticides and herbicides. The traditional suburban lawn, on average, has 10x more chemical pesticides per acre than farmland. By choosing native plants for your landscaping, you are not only helping wildlife, but you are creating a healthier place for yourself, your family, and your community. Helping the Climate: Landscaping with native plants can combat climate
change. In addition to the reduced noise and carbon pollution from lawn mower exhaust, many native plants, especially long-living trees like oaks and maples, are effective at storing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Conserving Water: Because native plants are adapted to local environmental conditions, they require far less water saving time, money, and perhaps the most valuable natural resource, water. Wildlife: In addition to providing vital habitat for birds, many other species of wildlife benefit as well. The colorful array of butterflies and moths, including
the iconic monarch, the swallowtails, tortoiseshells, and beautiful
blues, are all dependent on very specific native plant species.
Native plants provide nectar for pollinators including humming-
birds, native bees, butterflies, moths and bats. They provide pro-
tective shelter for many mammals. The native nuts, seeds, and
fruits produced by these plants offer essential foods for all forms
of wildlife.
Osprey Photo by Mark Gorges
You can now view a digital bird guide for any hotspot or region in the world: an Illustrated Checklist. The best part? It’s all using sightings that you and everyone else contributed! They take the highest-rated photo and sound from the Macaulay Library, combine with eBird data to show seasonal occurrence, and include the last date when a species was seen in that place. The result: a quick overview for the region that gives the most relevant information. Want your photos to be the best images for that region? Add them to your eBird checklists! To check out Illustrated Checklists, search for any re-gion or search for any hotspot in eBird. At the top of the species list you’ll see a new tab titled “Illustrated Checklist.” In eBird, Go to “Explore Data,” then type in the area you want to look at, i.e. Wyoming or Laramie (county). For the area or site that you request, they will tell you how many species have been reported, how many of those have photos, how many have audio, how many more need photos and how many more need audio. In addition to the list of species, the new additions are photos of each species taken in that area and sound recordings of each species also taken in the area that you selected. View an example for Laramie County, WY at https://
ebird.org/ebird/subnational2/US-WY-021/media?yr=all&m= This functionality is another great example of the close connection between eBird and the Macaulay Library at the Cor-nell Lab of Ornithology. They hope these Illustrated Checklists provide an excit-ing new way to visualize the contributions you’ve made to eBird and ML, an added incentive to add your top photos from your favorite spots, and a window through which you can explore the contributions of others. Have fun, and don’t forget to add star ratings for your images! To understand how to rate any of the images on eBird, go to http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/2665949 for in-structions.
Below is an example of the new information the Illus-
trated Checklist provides for the Ferruginous Hawk in Wyoming:
— a picture and who took it;
— a sonogram of a recording that is hyperlinked to the recording;
— the number (91) of additional photos and a hyperlink to them;
— the number (2) of additional sound recordings and a hyperlink.
Want to work on your tricky IDs? Use an Illustrated Checklist to see and hear all the pos-sible species at a place!
eBird Mobile for Android took a big step forward recently:
the ability to keep ‘tracks’ of where you eBird.
Every time you start a checklist on eBird Android, you
now have the option to keep a GPS track of where you walk for
your traveling counts. The ‘tracks’ automatically calculate the dis-
tance traveled and time spent eBirding—all you have to do is watch
birds!
This is an important new chapter in eBird, opening the
door for many exciting new future tools: improved research that can
use the actual path you birded, eBird data outputs that can show the
precise path of any given checklist, and much more. Plus, it makes
your birding even easier.
To learn all about eBird, go to http://help.ebird.org/
customer/portal/articles/2411868.
Two new features in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird program
© Janice Backstrom Sonogram © Gerrit Vyn
eBird Android—automatically tracks your birding
Cheyenne – High Plains Audubon Society
P.O. Box 2502
Cheyenne, WY 82003
Bird by ear to identify the unseen
Published July 16, 2017, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle—By Barb Gorges
Here on the western edge of the Great Plains, our trees don't grow so thick that you can't walk all the way around one to see the bird that's singing. But it is still useful to be able to identi-fy birds by sound. I'm a visually-oriented person, so over time I've learned to identify our local birds well enough to often figure out who they are as they flash by. I can only identify bird voices of the most common or unique sounding species. At the big box stores in town, in the garden departments, there is almost always an incessant cheeping overhead from in-vading house sparrows. If you get up at oh-dark-thirty on a spring or summer morning in town, you are likely to hear the cheerful "cheerio" of a robin. Putting up a bird feeder may bring in house finches, with their different chatter. I especially like hearing the goldfinches around the thistle feeder which sound as if they are small children calling questions to each other. Birding by ear becomes a more important skill in the mountains where the forest is thicker. The Cheyenne - High Plains Audubon Society's mid-June field trip was to the Vedau-woo recreation area on the Medicine Bow National Forest. We planned to hike the Turtle Rock trail. Since most of Wyoming's birds are found near water (birdwatchers are most likely found there too), we focused on the beaver ponds. Some birds, like the flocks of tree swallows flitting across the water, are never hidden away. But one warbling bird was. It didn't sound quite like a robin. I went through a mental list of birds that like riparian, or streamside, habitats and casually remarked, "Maybe it's a war-bling vireo." Then I realized I could check the free Merlin app on my phone and play a recording of a warbling vireo. Amazingly, it matched. Yellow warblers are almost always somewhere around in the brush around water at upper elevations too and we could hear one. It has a very loud, unique call. Being bright yellow, it isn't hard to spot singing in the willows. There are species of birds that resemble each other so closely-the empidonax flycatchers-that it is necessary to hear them sing to tell them apart. On the other hand, there are species that sound so much
like each other, it causes the problem people used to have telling me and my mom apart on the phone. For example, robin and black-headed grosbeak songs have a clear, babbling quality, but if you listen a lot while the grosbeaks are here during migration, you can tell who is the real robin. On the trail, chapter member Don Edington picked out a bird at the tip top of an evergreen, singing away. It was yellow, with black and white wings, like an over-sized goldfinch. Its head had the lightest wash of orangey-red. It was another robin voice impersonator, the western tanager. Visually, the sparrows are mostly a large brown cloud in my mind. The same can be said for distinguishing, much less remembering, many bird songs. I like birds with easy to remem-ber songs, like the ruby-crowned kinglet, another bird to expect in the forest. It is so tiny your chances are slim of seeing it on its favorite perches in large spruce trees. After being inundated by Swainson's thrushes this spring-but all completely mute while they inspected our backyard, it was a pleasure to catch the trill of one on the trail. But then I checked it against a recording on Merlin and realized we had the thrush that doesn't trill upwards, but the other, trilling downwards, the hermit thrush. It does help to study the field guides in advance of seeing a bird species for the first time-just knowing which ones to expect in a certain habitat is helpful. Studying bird songs before ventur-ing into the woods again would be as useful. I need to crack open that new book by Nathan Pieplow, "Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Eastern North America," and the corresponding recordings at www.petersonbirdsounds.com<http://www.petersonbirdsounds.com>. Except, we'll only find the species we share with eastern North America. We won't find our strictly western bird species until he finishes the western edition. But I could work on his technique for distinguishing songs-before I spend too much more time in the woods. Note: In addition to Merlin and Peterson, find more bird sound recordings at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/, or try https://macaulaylibrary.org. For the latter, try filtering by location to get birds using Wyoming dialects.