The Hermit Thrush Newsletter
We are excited to share that we have revamped our education grant program to make it more accessible and attractive to teachers and other leaders working with students and children in our service area. New this year we’ll be processing requests on a monthly basis to get funding into the hands of folks with great project ideas, and, we’ve increased the amount of money that can be applied for to up to $1K per project.
The year 2022 has been a mixed one for Audubon Vermont’s priorities at the Vermont General Assembly, with the story not quite yet over. As of the date of writing this article, I can report that the legislature passed some priority bills signed into law by the Governor, and passed some that have already been vetoed or face the threat of a Governor’s veto.
This report has been updated for 2021-2022.
As winter approaches the migratory birds-warblers, vireos, blackbirds, and hawks-depart. Resident birds, chickadees, titmice, cardinals and the like persist, but we dearly miss the departed. Fear not. Our winter migrants, the winter finches, and their allies will arrive shortly. Or not. The birds are known collectively as winter finches are irruptive species, appearing in Vermont in some years, but not others. Predicting their movements has become a cottage industry of sorts and forecasts put out by Tyler Hoar of the Finch Research Network.
Calibrations and Recognitions
Robert Frost's poem, “The Oven Bird,” is a poem of calibration. The poem is built on several easily recognizable literary tropes: the bird is personified, so that its song is given human meaning and human resonance. Then an analogy is extended between the bird and our human realm. Finally, another analogy is drawn between the passage of time as one season replaces another – as spring moves into summer – and the maturation of the human psyche.
The Haidee Antram Award was created 25 years ago by John and Elizabeth Newberry in honor of their daughter Haidee, who was an enthusiastic volunteer at the Green Mountain Audubon Center. This award is a scholarship given to an exceptional intern or volunteer at the GMAC and is intended to further the recipient’s education and experience in the natural world. This year the GMAS is pleased to announce that Gus Lunde is the 2019 Haidee Antram Award recipient.
The Green Mountain Audubon Society has been surveying birds at the Catamount Community Forest since 1996. With variable habitats which include forests, grasslands, edges, power line ROWs, and wetlands, we have identified 140 bird species with evidence for breeding at Catamount for 53 species. One bird we have been watching closely is the Bobolink, a grassland species which has been in serious decline in the U.S. This wonderful member of the blackbird family is a long-distance traveler. It winters in Argentina, Bolivia, and Uruguay and travels all the way to the northern U.S. and southern Canada to breed. With such a long distance to travel, Bobolinks get a single shot each year to successfully nest and raise their young. If the first attempt at nesting is unsuccessful, it’s back to South America.
The 71st Burlington circle CBC went off without a hitch. With our new organizer, Elizabeth Spinney, firmly in control 68 observers set out into the field at dawn (or in the case of Allan Strong’s owling team before dawn) on December 16 to do the count. The weather was as good as could be expected with temperatures in the 30’s and no snow cover to speak of. The 15 teams plus the nocturnal team and the crow counters recorded 73 species, just short of our record of 77, and counted 13, 246 individual birds, well short of the 2014 record of 24, 306.
