Dr. Paul Bartell will be examining the physiological and neurobiological changes that allow for nocturnal migration to occur in songbirds.

Dr. Bartell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Animal Science at The Pennsylvania State University. Research in his lab focuses on the ways in which biological clocks in birds are regulated and how they, in turn, organize the behaviors and life history strategies we have all come to know and love.

Dr. Bartell will be joining us at our physical meeting via Zoom.

Public Meeting - Building Connections for Shorebird Protection: How Education and Outreach Can Protect Georgia's Shorebirds
Speaker: Abby Sterling

Join us as we learn about the incredible habitats that shorebirds from across the hemisphere depend on, right in our own backyards! The Georgia Coast is a home or stopping point for over 300,000 shorebirds every year, and in order to protect the places they need, raising awareness and building partnerships is a critical step.

Manomet's Georgia Bight Shorebird Conservation Initiative seeks to do just that, through highlighting Wildlife Beach Zones, connecting with ecotour groups, and building partnerships with the boating community. Learn more about these programs, the shorebirds that they are benefiting, and ways that you can get involved!

Public Meeting - More than just a backyard bird: unlocking the mysteries of American Robin migration
Speaker: Emily Williams

The American Robin (Turdus migratorius) may be the early bird that catches the worm, the archetypal backyard bird, and all that jazz - but it turns out there's still a lot to learn from this common bird. Beyond the facts that robins seem to be doing perfectly fine (they are increasing across much of their range), may be one of the most widely distributed songbirds on the North American continent, and they seem to be expanding their range, both northward and southward - robins are also an enigma when it comes to their migratory behavior. In turns out this “resident” or “short-distance migrant” is misunderstood and underestimated. To learn more about their migration and what robins can teach us, Georgetown University PhD student Emily Williams is embarking upon a multi-year, multi-state project to set the record straight about this overlooked bird.

Emily is a Florida native and grew up enjoying having Cape Canaveral “Playalinda” National Seashore and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge as her backyard. After receiving degrees at the University of Florida and Kansas State University, Emily decided she had enough of the heat and moved to Alaska, where she worked at Denali National Park and Preserve for four and a half years. She then transitioned from the smallest town she’s ever lived to the biggest, settling in the nation’s capitol to pursue her doctorate. While she doesn’t miss the temperatures or bugs, Emily still holds dear the birds and BBQ of the southeast, which have no match anywhere else.

Attendees must be fully vaccinated and remain masked for the duration of the meeting

Ogeechee Audubon will celebrate the Holidays with a relaxed time together sharing stories about birds!

The evening will be filled with hearing about your best bird story and then engaging is a game of bird bingo. There will be prizes.

Light refreshments will be served.

Please join us as we celebrate birds, birding and us - the birders!

Speaker Todd Schneider

A native of Wisconsin, Todd worked for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources from 1985-1993 as a Fisheries Technician and Fisheries Biologist. Since 1993, he has been a Wildlife Biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife Resources Division, Wildlife Conservation Section where he specializes in bird conservation issues. Todd will be talking about Henslow's sparrow conservation in Georgia, particularly efforts by the Wildlife Resources Division over the past dozen years. These efforts include surveys on Wildlife Management Areas to find and track populations, research to define habitat structure and needs, movement patterns and other life history features, diet analysis, and attempts to develop automated habitat searching and predictive models using remote sensing via satellite data and other high tech mechanisms

For Public Meetings at the First Presbyterian Church of Savannah

Attendees must be fully vaccinated and remain masked for the duration of the meeting.

Speaker Larry Carlile

Larry has been a Wildlife Biologist for the Department of Defense at Fort Stewart / Hunter Army Airfield for the past 27 years. Larry is Chief of the Fort Stewart/Hunter Army Airfield Fish and Wildlife Branch and supervises a staff of 25 wildlife biologists, technicians, and contractors. He’s responsible for the management and monitoring of state and federally protected rare, threatened, and endangered species including; the smooth coneflower, bald eagle, wood stork, eastern indigo snake, frosted flatwoods salamander, and red-cockaded woodpeckers, as well as game species and sport fish within an active and dynamic military landscape. Larry's presentation will discuss the recovery of the Fort Stewart red-cockaded woodpecker population and management activities that support other rare species on the Installation.

For Public Meetings at the First Presbyterian Church of Savannah

Attendees must be fully vaccinated and remain masked for the duration of the meeting.

Speaker Stephanie Chewning with One Hundred Miles

Join us “in person,” as we explore our beautiful barrier islands on Georgia’s coast. Have you ever imagined how these islands were formed to begin with and how they benefit the plants and animals that live on them now? During this program we will we will learn more about the role of barrier islands on our coast, explore the forces that frequently change them, and travel back in time to how they were formed. Don’t miss this chance to learn more about the mysterious and powerful forces that shape the coast we love.

Please come and support our return to semi-normalcy and see your friends at OAS.

Reserve your spot by signing up at ogeecheeaudubon.help@gmail.com . Limit 25.

Come and learn how to make your coastal landscape a sanctuary for birds. Guest speaker Keren Giovengo, UGA EcoScapes Program Manager, will speak on the importance of native plants in attracting birds, the basics of planning and creating bird-friendly habitats, and how to create these landscapes in coastal Georgia. By establishing native landscapes, you will provide a key tool in increasing bird diversity, abundance, and their resilience to adapt and survive amid a changing climate.

Zoom link will be emailed prior to the meeting. If you are not a member and would like to participate please contact ogeecheeaudubon.help@gmail.com for details.

The Annual Meeting of Ogeechee Audubon Society will be held just prior to our program on Tuesday, April 20, 2021 at 7 pm via Zoom. No officers are due for election/re-election at this time since no one’s term has expired. A brief overview of the past year will be presented as well as the finances for fiscal year 2020-2021.

Whether at feeders, neighborhood parks, or flying overhead, birds share with us the developed landscape. Unfortunately, these altered habitats come with various threats, including lighting and reflective glass. During this presentation, Georgia Audubon conservation director Adam Betuel will outline the issue of bird-building collisions, why these collisions occur, and the steps you can take to learn more about this problem and make your space bird-safe.

This is a virtual meeting via Zoom.

An email will be sent to each member via MailChimp prior to this meeting with the link for the Zoom Program. Not a member, click here to request the information.

If you don’t have Zoom or need a brief tutorial click here.

This is a virtual meeting via Zoom.

Place – Zoom Meeting

Topic: Holiday Celebration of Birds with Games and Fun

An email will be sent to each member via MailChimp on December 7th with the link for the Zoom Program.

I hope to “see” you there! We should have fun!

This is a Zoom Meeting:

This is a repeat of the presentation we did at the Savannah-Ogeechee Canal in September. We want to be able to offer this program to more folks. You can participate from the comfort and protection of your own home.

An email will be sent to each member via Mail Chimp on October 12th with the link for the Zoom Program.

I hope to “see” you there!

Please open to read details of this meeting and out to participate.

Ogeechee Audubon Board has decided to continue in Flockdown, therefore we will not have our public meeting in June.

Our April meeting is the time designated in the By Laws for our Annual Meeting and the election of officers. We are postponing the Annual Meeting until the next meeting of the membership which is to be determined based on the timeline dictated by the virus.

Our By Laws do not specifically address a pandemic situation so we believe since our activities are suspended, at the first opportunity when we can safely reconvene we will have the Annual meeting and hold the elections. In the meantime, the present officers will continue to serve.

Speaker: Heather Merbs, Director of Oatland Island Wildlife Center

Oatland Island Wildlife Center was established in 1974 as a unit of the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System to provide environmental education and outdoor learning for local school children. The 175 acre facility includes a two mile nature trail that leads visitors through forest, salt marsh, and pond habitats …

Please Join Ogeechee Audubon Society for our Annual Holiday Party!

Light refreshments will be provided.

Diana Churchill will lead us in a warm-up for the Christmas Bird Count and a friendly competition to test our birding skills will follow! A special surprise is planned as well!

Bring a guest who wants to become an OAS member!

Speaker: Jake Henry is new to the Savannah area, working as the Field Manager for the Savannah Tree Foundation since August of 2018. In this position, Jake focuses on coordinating tree planting and volunteer events, as well as maintaining trees after planting. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Earth Sciences from Cornell University, and his Masters in Forestry from Mississippi State University. Jake’s experience with non-profit conservation organizations has helped shape how he not only conserves natural resources, but engages the community. Most recently, Jake also became an ISA Certified Arborist.

OAS Public Meeting:

First, Isaiah Scott, who was awarded a scholarship supported jointly by Georgia Ornithological Society and Ogeechee Audubon Society, will present his experiences this summer at the birding camp for teens at Audubon’s Hog Island in Maine.

The second part of our September meeting will be a brief instruction on eBird – the Basics. We will cover how to use eBird and Merlin ID apps. Bring your smart phones and please download the apps prior to the meeting. We will practice using these apps. This presentation is for novices to learn these apps.

Speaker: Phyllis Limbacher Tildes

Phyllis Limbacher Tildes is an award-winning author and illustrator of two dozen picture books for children, infants to about eight years old. Her passion for nature and wildlife is reflected in many of her titles. Phyllis will be showing the steps of creating the art for her children’s books and talking about the research, writing and path to publication as well.

Speaker: Abby Sterling will discuss how the Georgia Coast provides critical habitat to many species of shorebirds that are experiencing significant population declines. Learn more as Abby highlights incredible stories and the conservation efforts underway to protect them.

Abby works as a shorebird biologist with Manomet’s Georgia Bight Shorebird Conservation Initiative. Manomet is a non-profit based in Massachusetts that uses science and partnerships to address conservation challenges throughout the hemisphere. Abby Sterling earned her doctorate from the University of Georgia, where she studied how habitat and landscape features influence beach nesting shorebirds and chick survival.

In this program Russ will give us an introduction to noise pollution, and its harmful impact on humans and wildlife. Human quality of life has diminished and we have been subconsciously conditioned to tolerate noise as a part of everyday life without realizing its impacts on our health and hearing. Ecosystems and wildlife diversity in urban and suburban environments have been altered as noise averse species have declined leaving only those which can still tolerate and communicate in spite of the noise pollution.

Ogeechee Audubon Society will be celebrating the culmination of the Year of the Bird with our Holiday Party. 

Our celebration will feature a presentation by Diana Churchill on Winter Birds as a warm-up for our upcoming Christmas Birds Counts.  We will then put our skills to the test in a friendly competition!  In addition, we will conclude our raffle benefiting the Orphaned Bird Care Program. 

Speaker: Larry Carlile

Larry’s presentation will discuss the recovery of the Fort Stewart red-cockaded woodpecker population and management activities that support other rare species on the Installation. Larry is an avid birder, is a member of Ogeechee Audubon Society, and is President of the Georgia Ornithological Society.

Larry Carlile is a graduate of the University of Georgia, D.B. Warnell School of Forestry (MS). He has been a Wildlife Biologist for the Department of Defense at Fort Stewart / Hunter Army Airfield for the past 24 years. Larry supervises a staff of nine wildlife biologists and is responsible for the management and monitoring of state and federally protected rare, threatened, and endangered species including the smooth coneflower, bald eagle, wood stork, eastern indigo snake, frosted flatwoods salamander, and red-cockaded woodpecker, as well as game species and sport fish within an active and dynamic military landscape.

Ogeechee Audubon Society Meeting
Program:
The Accidental Birder – Birds I Saw as I Traveled Through South Africa

There will be a raffle (supporting Orphan Bird Care) and we will be selling OAS pins

Ogeechee Audubon Society Meeting
Celebration of the Year of the Bird Special Program:
Georgia Climate Change and The Future of North American Birds

There will be a raffle (supporting Orphan Bird Care) and refreshments!

Agenda annual meeting - April 17, 2018:

• Overview of OAS activities & financials
• Discussion & vote for "Revised Constitution and By Laws"
• Nominations & vote for slate of officers for 2018