President's Message
Bill Rowe
To all our readers: Here is a look at some of the important things we’ve been working on and thinking about at St. Louis Audubon.
Annual Appeal: One major piece of business each fall is the Annual Appeal, which should have reached you recently in one form or another, or will soon. No doubt you have noticed that a lot—maybe all—of the organizations to which you contribute conduct a campaign at this time of the year. This isn’t just a bandwagon; there are practical reasons for the timing, including the incentive that some donors still have of taking a charitable deduction on their taxes for 2023. Even for the many members who don’t use that option, we trust you will recognize the importance of this once-a-year direct appeal for donations. It is a key part of our budget every year, to keep us functioning in the black. Please note that the Appeal does not end on December 31! We would love to receive your gift soon, but all that we receive from now until the end of February will be credited toward it, so if you need to wait until the first part of 2024 to make your gift (like me), that’s just fine.
Bring Conservation Home: BCH is going strong with Dan Pearson, Shannon Callahan, and the volunteers all working hard at keeping up with demand. Week by week, they are managing the steady stream of requests by homeowners for consultations about improving their property through native plantings and environmentally conscious management.
Strategic Planning: As I’ve mentioned before, our current five-year Strategic Plan, published in the spring of 2019, will have run its course soon, with some notable successes as well as plans that got completely sidetracked by Covid-19. The Board has approved moving forward with a “plan to revise the Plan.” By the end of November, five subcommittees will have met to confer about major aspects of St. Louis Audubon’s organization and activities: Membership and Finances, Management (i.e., Board and Staff), Conservation, Education and Outreach, and BCH. The format for each will center around a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of that area. The results will be pooled by a steering group, discussed by the full Board, and eventually presented to the membership in draft form. By March, we expect to have a complete revised plan to guide us for five more years.
National Conference: Amy, our Executive Director, will be attending a Leadership Conference organized by the National Audubon Society, November 2-4, in Estes Park, Colorado, and I will join her there. We expect to take part in good discussions about NAS’s own plans for the future, how they may help us at the local level, and how they might use our help in return. It is also a chance to make personal connections with folks from other partner organizations around the country, some of them small and entirely volunteer-run, some large with a multi-member staff, and some in between (like us).
SLAS birding adventures: (1) Our fine volunteer groups who lead field trips and beginner birding walks remain busy with a full calendar and generally good attendance; but in case you have been on the fence, please do consider joining one or more of these, seeing perhaps more birds than you might have expected, learning a lot, and enjoying this great portal into the natural world of Missouri and Illinois. (2) As mentioned earlier, we do intend to offer one or two birding trips out of state in 2024, in conjunction with Naturalist Journeys, the company for which Pat Lueders works as a guide. It seems clear that the Arizona birding tour in early August is a go, and we’ll notify you in December as to exactly where and when to register for that. And we are still considering a trip to New Mexico in March but are not yet sure it will work. Again, let Amy know if you are interested in either one but have not yet contacted her.
Ornithological forecast: OK, it gets cold in November—is that good? Emphatically, yes. The colder weather brings us a new set of birds, both migrants and winter residents. Prominent among the migrants are the waterfowl, a term that refers specifically to swans, geese, and ducks. November is a prime month for their southward movement, and places like Clarence Cannon National Wildlife Refuge now have duck populations in the tens of thousands. Smaller numbers will show up on almost any body of water, along with coots, loons, grebes, and gulls of several species, all of which are lake and river birds even if not technically waterfowl. November is also a good month for raptors, like some of the later-arriving Merlins, Sharp-shins, and harriers, or western-type Red-tailed Hawks, or Short-eared Owls. Depending on the year, it could be a good time to watch for a Rough-legged Hawk, or even the rare Northern Goshawk (making sure you know what to look for). Among the passerines, it’s time to watch for the arrival of Lapland Longspurs out in the fields that are now shorn of their corn and soybeans, plus more sparrows (including juncos) in the woods and brush, while also hoping for an early influx of winter finches like Pine Siskins or (cross your fingers) Red Crossbills or Common Redpolls. Uncommon icterids are either passing through, like Brewer’s Blackbird, or arriving for the winter, like Rusty Blackbird and Western Meadowlark. And there is also the chance of a mega-rarity, as some birds, especially juveniles, do get disoriented or blown off course. So haul out the sweaters, down jackets, and long johns, and join a field trip, or just go out by yourself. Consider it practice for the Christmas Bird Counts that begin in about five weeks!
Photo Credit: Al Smith, Lapland Longspur
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At Home Ecology, Curated Conservation
November 2023
Shannon Callahan
As we come to the finale of the gardening season, take a bow. Native plant enthusiasts across the area have spent the last eight months feeding pollinators and providing beauty to their communities through a succession of blooms. November typically brings repeated frosts, sending most deciduous plants into dormancy. Except, of course, for the strange habits of the American Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), whose blooms peak just as most others’ end and continue into December. With the right planning, a native garden can bloom year-round, a constant cycle of color. There are a few things you can do now to set yourself up for success in the spring. To best support overwintering insects, leave fallen leaf litter, especially under native trees. More overwintering habitat means more mature pollinators to visit your flowers. Wait until dormancy to prune shrubs and trees. If you plan on mulching landscape beds, consider using leaf mulch, either ground-up and store-bought or free leaf litter. While hardwood mulch is attractive, it is not functional habitat and is often more expensive than its ecological counterpart. November is a time to appreciate your successes and make plans for the next project.
Photo above: American Witch Hazel
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ANNUAL APPEAL 2023 ~ YOU KEEP US FLYING |
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St. Louis Audubon Society protects birds, other wildlife,
and the places we all need today and tomorrow.
Your generosity ensures that on-the-ground conservation
and education efforts are focused right here in our own community.
Any amount will help us engage our community in the
protection of birds, other wildlife, and their habitats!
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Thank you for investing in St. Louis’s natural environment
and helping to inspire all of us to love, learn about
and protect birds and nature.
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Want to get a jump start on your holiday shopping
or just skip the Black Friday lines?
Shop with St. Louis Audubon
November 16 - 19!
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Beginning Thursday, November 16 and ending Sunday, November 19, St. Louis Audubon Society will host an online auction to benefit our conservation and education work around the St. Louis region. We have a great collection of items for you to bid on, especially as we enter the season of gift giving! Books, gift baskets, quilted items, bird-friendly coffee, artwork and more will be available for your enjoyment!
Watch for a Bid for the Birds Online Auction email (coming soon)
to preview items and find out how to join in the fun!
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Bring Conservation Home acknowledged as
contributor in Oxford University Journal Paper
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Nina Fogel, St. Louis Audubon volunteer, completed her PhD at SLU in Gerardo Camilo’s Bee Lab. For her research, she studied bees in BCH gardens and was the co-founder of the Shutterbee citizen science project. Nina has a new paper published in the Journal of Urban Ecology. See the synopsis below, or click on the link to read the full paper. Congrats, Nina!
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When I was doing fieldwork in gardens enrolled in St. Louis Audubon’s Bring Conservation Home program, I was constantly impressed by the quality of habitat and the knowledge the homeowners had about the plants in their yard. I was seeing firsthand the impact that BCH was having on supporting urban bees and I wanted to examine other similar programs across the country. A new publication titled “A survey of American residential garden conservation programs” highlights our investigation into these programs.
We found 115 programs operating across the United States. Most are much less rigorous than BCH and simply require the homeowner to fill out a form and pay a fee—no home consultation required. However, this likely means that the quality of habitat created in these yards is lower than that of BCH yards because it is all self-reported. Further, many of these programs do not provide the resources to help people transform their landscaping. For example, less than half of programs defined what a native plant is, or why native plants are the foundation to good habitat, which means that for people with interest in gardening for wildlife but low knowledge of the terminology, understanding and enacting the certification criteria can be a challenge.
Overall, we think that the field of garden conservation programs as a whole is well-intentioned, but there is room for improvement. We look forward to seeing programs improve their certification criteria to engender the creation of high-quality habitat for wildlife and improve their support to engage people with high interest but low knowledge to transform their landscaping.
This paper would not have been written without our collaboration with SLAS, my many conversations with Mitch Leachman and Dan Pearson, and all the homeowners with their amazing gardens (and their many yard signs) who inspired me to investigate garden certification programs.
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Join others who share your interests in nature, birds and wildlife!
December 2 - Field Trip - Two Rivers NWR
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Photo Credit: Elaine Collins |
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ST. LOUIS AUDUBON SOCIETY BOARD MEETINGS
Next meeting: Tuesday, December 12
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Please Note: Board meetings will be held by Zoom and will not meet in person until further notice. If you have an interest in joining our volunteer Board, please contact one of the officers or staff members. |
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Officers & Staff
Bill Rowe, President
Michael Meredith, VP Conservation
Stephanie Schroeder, VP Education
Gail Saxton, Secretary
Nick Eaton, Treasurer
Amy Weeks, Executive Director
Dan Pearson, Director, BCH
Shannon Callahan, Outreach Specialist, BCH
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