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President's LetterGreetings, and I hope you’ve enjoyed your summer! I'm looking forward to another season of general meetings with some great presenters already lined up. This newsletter really outlines and documents our recent efforts and I think it is worth reading as we have had a very active membership recently. Thanks to all of you who have made our field trips interesting and safe.The people and resources of the Bighorn Basin and the Yellowstone Ecosystem recently lost an extremely important asset. As you may have heard or read in the newspapers, Erwin F. Evert recently passed away up the North Fork from a grizzly bear attack. He was an incredible botanist whom I was fortunate to meet for the first time only a few weeks before his tragic death. Many knew him and he was one of the best botanists in the state. He described many species and one BLM Sensitive Plant Species, an alpine variety and a regional endemic, was named after him—Evert’s Wafer-Parsnip (Cymopterus evertii). Erwin had just self-published Vascular Plants of the Greater Yellowstone Area, the first complete catalog and distribution atlas of plants in the Yellowstone Ecosystem. This compilation would be a normal man's life work. I felt like he was more capable than a normal man was. During the hike when I got to know him, he passed down his botanical information to the younger generation like an elder. He will be missed.  Evert’s Wafer-Parsnip (Cymopterus evertii), a new species found in northwest Wyoming, was named for its discoverer, the late Erwin F. Evert. The Bureau of Land Management includes it on its Sensitive Species List. BLM photo. Another tragedy, which has been of concern to most people, is, of course the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It has highlighted how our environmental regulatory process can be insufficient and how, as a nation, we should plan for the worst. It is hard to imagine that every day more oil is being spilled while all we can do is try to contain the spilled oil and wait for a relief well to be drilled. If you would like to assist the recovery efforts, here is how the National Audubon Society is requesting help: http://www.audubonaction.org/site/PageServer?pagename=aa_HowtoHelp Even though we’re a long way from the Gulf coast region, we should bear in mind that many of the birds that reside in or pass through our area use the Gulf during their migration. There are several steps that you can take to provide healthy habitats for birds, especially migrants, in your own yards and neighborhoods. For more information, including tips and suggestions, visit National Audubon’s “Birds to Help” pages, part of its “Audubon at Home” initiative, at http://audubonathome.org/birdstohelp Enjoy the rest of the summer!
New Officers Elected; Farewell to Outgoing Board MembersAt their society’s annual election, held during its April 2010 meeting, Meadowlark Audubon members unanimously elected the following slate of officers:President: Destin Harrell (2nd year of 2-year term) Vice President: John Rumm (1-year term) Secretary: Rosemary Hughes (1-year term) Treasurer: Lisa Marks (1-year term) Director: Sean Sheehan (1-year term)  Current and retiring officers and directors of Meadowlark Audubon Society posed for this group photograph at the Beck Lake picnic in June. L to R: Destin Harrell, John Rumm, John Osgood, Lisa Marks, Donna Haman, Rosemary Hughes, KaCey Ross. Sean Sheehan was unable to attend the picnic. Photo by Lyn Stallings. At the annual “year-end” Members’ Picnic at Beck Lake Park on June 24, President Harrell presented gifts of appreciation to two outgoing directors—John Osgood and KaCey Ross.  Destin Harrell presents a birdhouse to John Osgood and a hummingbird feeder to KaCey Ross. Photo by Lyn Stallings. In thanking them for their long years of dedicated service to the organization, Destin praised their good work and commitment to Audubon’s tradition of stewardship and environmentalism. We salute them and wish them both well! Editor's Notebook: Of BP and BP'sIt’s impossible to write an essay for the first Voice of the Meadowlark newsletter to appear since March, without acknowledging the greatest oil-related environmental disaster in history, still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico as I write this in mid-July. Countless millions of gallons of crude oil have gushed into the Gulf in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon fire and explosion; so, too, have untold millions of drops of ink been expended on analyses of the disaster, its causes, the efforts to deal with it, and its profound and far-reaching consequences. And so this essay is offered more as a meditation on BP and its meaning for “BP’s.”Late afternoon, Galveston Beach, Texas
Having completed two days’ worth of presentations in Houston, my colleagues and I had decided to make a quick foray to Galveston, some 50 miles to the southeast, to see the Gulf of Mexico. We drove for several miles along Galveston’s Seawall Boulevard, and parked so that we could walk out on a rocky pier that jutted out from the beach. We paused briefly to chat with some local anglers who, having finished up for the day, were retrieving their catches and packing up their tackle. What most captured my attention, however, were two things that I sighted from the pier. One was an enormous flock of Brown Pelicans—easily several hundred birds—circling over the water and occasionally plunging downward. I marveled at their uncanny synchronicity—the way they wheeled and turned all at once. The other sight that caught my eyes was a group of indistinct shapes, barely visible on the horizon. At first, I thought they were ships, but then I realized that they were offshore drilling platforms. As we gazed at them, we talked about drilling in the Gulf, and mused about the consequences of an oil spill in this region. It was Tuesday, April 20th. Unbeknownst to us, a few hundred miles to the east, off the coast of Louisiana, the Deepwater Horizon inferno was raging and lives were being lost. For me, “BP” will forever be linked in my mind with the memory not only of the disaster, but also of the BP’s that I saw that day—the Brown Pelicans wheeling gracefully in the air.
Early afternoon, Kildonan, Isle of Arran
Forty-three days had elapsed since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Some 4300 miles and an ocean away, I was strolling along the rocky shore of Kildonan, a village on the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, off the coast of Scotland. I’d gone to Scotland for a conference and, with one day on my own, decided to spend it birding. Four days earlier, before leaving Cody, I’d found online a checklist of birds for Arran, a place I’d never heard of, and had e-mailed the list’s compiler to inquire about what I could hope to see with a few hours to spend there. Much to my delight, he replied almost immediately, regretting that he would be away and so could not meet me, but informing me that he’d made arrangements with a colleague of his, Alan Hollick, to “share some local birding” with me. Alan—who referred to himself as “someone dangerously close to 60 years old with a grey beard and binoculars round my neck”—met me at the ferry dock in Brodick, ushered me to his Mazda Miata convertible, and off we dashed for a quick tour of the southern end of Arran. I couldn’t have asked for a better tour-guide or a more amiable companion. A lifelong resident of Arran, Alan has, for a dozen years, conducted a monthly count of avifauna for the Arran Natural History Society’s Wetland Bird Survey. He knows the island, and its birding haunts, inside and out. In three hours’ time, we tallied nearly 40 species of birds, including swans, shelducks and eiders, gulls, shags and cormorants, oystercatchers, plovers, wagtails, pipits, and numerous varieties of thrushes, warblers, flycatchers and finches. As I toured with Alan, BP was far from my mind, but not BP’s—as in “birding people,” the sort of folks that so many birders epitomize. It’s been my experience that wherever my birding forays take me, if I encounter another birder along the way, we’ll more than likely stop, greet one another, and compare notes on what we’ve seen. Even as strangers, we form this bond. We BP’s are a diverse and far-flung lot—from all walks of life, every age and gender, every nationality. Yet whatever our backgrounds may be, we share a common attribute—a passion for birds, whether new additions to our life-lists or old familiar friends. That shared passion joins us as members of a global community whose ranks number well into the scores of millions, making it arguably one of the largest such interest-based communities in the world. Because of who we are and what unites us, we BP’s tend to see the world differently than most folks do. We look at “birds” and see them not as undifferentiated forms, but as distinct species, no two of which are exactly alike. We see birds as harbingers of seasonal change, as beacons of biodiversity, as marvels of evolutionary design, as fellow inhabitants of this small blue planet we call home. For us, BP means a deeply felt tragedy, an epic sense of loss, a rent in the very fabric of life. But also for us, as BP’s, BP serves as a reminder, as if we needed another one, of the constant and enduring need for humility instead of hubris.
Meadowlark Audubon Society Selects First Deb Woodbridge Memorial Scholarship RecipientEditor’s Note: As noted in the March 2010 newsletter, three years ago Meadowlark began developing a scholarship program, thereby fulfilling a dream of the late Deb Woodbridge, who passed away from cancer in 2008, and who had been instrumental in launching the program. Through t-shirt sales and donations made in her name, we raised sufficient money to establish the scholarship fund. Its intention was to award a $1,000 scholarship to a graduating high school student from our four-county region whose career goals supported the mission of the National Audubon Society—focusing on birds, other wildlife and their habitats, and conserving and restoring natural ecosystems for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity.In May, Meadowlark Audubon’s scholarship selection committee unanimously awarded the Deb Woodbridge Memorial Scholarship to Emily Johnson, who graduated the same month from Cody High School. At an award ceremony on May 11, Meadowlark President Harrell presented the award—one of the largest such scholarships presented—to Emily. Along with her scholarship, Emily will also receive a one-year membership to Meadowlark Audubon. Emily will enroll at Northwest College this fall and looks forward to attending the University of Wyoming in 2012, where she plans to pursue a degree in environment and natural resources. We are delighted to print Emily’s essay below, and wish her the very best in her future endeavors! My career plan is to become a marine biologist. I want to do this because I have always been interested in the large diversity of species that the ocean houses, from fish to mammals, corals to invertebrates. The ocean is one of the earth’s most biologically diverse ecosystems. By becoming a marine biologist, I hope to further the mission of the Audubon Society: “To conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity.” I hope to further this mission as a marine biologist because I want to make people, especially in Third World countries, more aware of the dangers of overfishing. In many areas of the world, this has already happened. The local people hurt the ecosystem of the ocean by first fishing out all the larger predatory fish, which keep the smaller fishes’ population in balance. Without the larger predatory fish, the smaller fishes’ population, which mainly eat plant life off the reef, grows out of control, and they end up overeating the food source, leaving the reef barren and lifeless. When the larger predatory fish are all fished out, the locals will then catch anything that they can, which can also kill a reef because the small fish that eat the algae before they overtake and outcompete the coral are gone. The algae, with nothing to stop them, overtake and kill the coral, destroying an entire small ecosystem within the larger one. To stop the overfishing and the danger of destroying reefs all over and potentially robbing the entire ocean of its biological diversity, we need to create marine reserves and marine parks in areas where larger predatory fish are known to spawn and hunt on smaller fish. A marine reserve is an area of the sea that has legal protection against fishing or development. A marine park is a park consisting of an area of water, sea or lake, sometimes protected for recreational use, but more often set aside to preserve a specific habitat and ensure that the ecosystem is sustained for the organisms that exist there. The largest, and perhaps the best-known marine park, is the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park off the coast of Australia. Another way to stop overfishing and help restore predatory fish populations is the practice of catch and release. Catch and release ensures that the young predatory fish can mature to breeding age and steadily restore the population of the species. Many fishing resorts and tours have already adopted this practice. The tourism that sport fishing creates, and the money it generates, help the locals so that they do not have to rely on fishing as a job or a food source. I hope one day to help restore the populations and size of the larger predatory fishes across the world so that generations to come will be able to have the fish for both food and recreation. By becoming a marine biologist, I will be able to further the mission of the Audubon Society, by helping to save the biological diversity of the earth’s oceans. Conserving and restoring natural ecosystems in oceans around the world not only will save the large amounts of biodiversity in its plants and animals and their habitats, but also will benefit humanity.
Sage Grouse Diverter InstallationThis past June 12, ten volunteers drove out to two sage-grouse leks near YU Bench and installed 1,500 sage grouse collision diverters, made of reflective plastic, on fence lines within a .6-mile radius of the leks. These are among the most impacted leks in the area, and activity there has been suppressed in recent years.With their wings outstretched, and moving 30 miles an hour, grouse cannot see the fences while flying to the leks in the early morning hours. The collisions that result are highly lethal. Yet the collision diverters that we installed have been shown to reduce sage grouse mortality rates significantly. A study in Farson, Wyoming, showed that these diverters reduced strikes on a 4.7-mile section of fence by 70% out of 146 documented strikes in a year. We’re hopeful that our mitigation efforts near the YU Bench leks will increase the population size in this area, which should support more grouse than what we currently see.
Spring Field Trip Reports:
Heart Mountain Sage Grouse Lek VisitOn April 24th (which is near the peak of lek attendance by males), a good-sized group of about 15 people took advantage of an opportunity offered by Meadowlark Audubon to see this wonder of the sagebrush-steppe at a lek in the benchland near Heart Mountain. Along with Meadowlark members, participants included workers from Yellowstone National Park, and residents from throughout the Bighorn Basin. Many in the group had never seen this type of display before. We all learned something new about breeding bird behavior and mating systems as we watched 41 male Greater Sage Grouse strut for a few females.We ended the trip with an excellent display by two Long-billed Curlews foraging nearby, with the early morning light illuminating their orange buff feathers. On the way out, we saw two more curlews. Last year we looked for them without success, but this year we were lucky to see these large shorebirds amongst the sage.
Cottonwood Canyon WalkIn mid-morning on Saturday, May 8, Jo Cook, John McGough and I assembled at the National Park Service’s Visitor Center in Lovell to hike up Cottonwood Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains. From the Visitor Center, we drove 14 or so miles east to the top of the pediment that rises from the Yellowtail Reservoir and stops at the base of the mountains. A small campground there was empty when we arrived.After checking our daypacks to make sure we had everything we would need, we started up the trail. The weather was cool and dry with a moderate wind from the west. We were hoping the wind might slacken once we reached the narrower canyon, but that was not the case. The sun was shining brightly, however, and it was gorgeous to be back in the mountains. Much of a recent light snowfall had melted, and the vegetation was bright green. The stark contrast between the canyon’s south side, with its meadow and conifers, and the north side with its bare rock and low brush, reminded us of the pivotal role water plays in a dry environment. Numerous wildflowers were in their spring finery and putting on great displays shooting star, phlox and mountain bluebell, all added their blue, purple and white hues to the modest background colors of rock, tree and brush along the creek. We watched the skies, also, and noted a Golden Eagle, a Turkey Vulture, either a Chipping or Field Sparrow, and two Mourning Doves. We heard but couldn’t quite see a robin. The bottom portion of the canyon was replete with traces of the uranium mining and prospecting that went on here during the 1950s: old roads ending at places of minor digging, scars on the canyon sides, and one large area of significant rock removal on the south side, with evidence of vertical shot-holes (for explosives) 125 or more feet up what used to be a slope. All of this offered mute reminders of a day gone by and an atomic arms race that is no more. We crossed the stream a mile or so up the canyon, and started to ascend as the trail began to grow steep. Two men on horseback passed us and said they were out to check on the trail and give their horses some exercise for the spring. Reaching the top of the steep portion of trail, we found a small meadow bathed in sunlight and mostly sheltered from the wind. Here we had a restful lunch amidst a backdrop of mountains soaring on three sides, and enjoyed the beauty and quiet of a place where few people venture. Time it was to turn around, and so back down the trail we started. The two horseback riders returned from farther up the trail as we were leaving the meadow, and stopped for a break themselves. They told us they had turned around after running into a foot of snow a little further up the canyon. Such is springtime in the mountains of Wyoming. It didn’t take us long to hike back down the canyon, and soon we had reached the trailhead at its mouth. It had been a beautiful day, and we had spent at least part of it in a very beautiful place.
May Warbler WalkNine chilled, but still enthusiastic, birders braved a stiff wind and temperatures in the low 40s—hardly your typical weather for the third weekend of May—to participate in Meadowlark Audubon’s first annual “Warbler Walk” on Saturday, May 22. The walk took place along the Shoshone Riverway Trail [Paul Stock trail,] which extends along the south bank of the Shoshone River between 12th and 19th streets in Cody. Easily accessed and paved its entire length, the trail extends 1.3 miles through a diverse array of habitats, including the rapidly-flowing river itself, riparian thickets, wetlands, ponds, and even scattered sagebrush.Beginning our walk at the western trailhead in the parking lot beneath the Belfry Bridge, we paused briefly to scan shrubs and trees on the river’s opposite bank, spotting our first warbler—a Yellow—along with several Song Sparrows, easily identified by their lilting calls. Heading eastward, we observed several birds flitting in the thickets of alder, cottonwood and other trees flanking the trail, including Catbird, Cedar Waxwing, Black-headed Grosbeak, Mourning and Eurasian Collared-Dove, Black-capped and Mountain Chickadee, American Robin and Swainson’s Thrush. Further on, stands of cattails and bulrushes in the marshes and trees and shrubs in the river bottomland yielded Yellow-rumped Warbler (or “Butter-butt,” as one member inelegantly, though aptly, termed it), Common Yellowthroat, Red-winged, Yellow-headed, and Brewer’s Blackbirds, Brown-headed Cowbird, Common Grackle, Black-billed Magpie, Northern Flicker, White-crowned Sparrow and American Goldfinch. We saw several species of waterfowl in the river and ponds, including Mallards, American Widgeon, Cinnamon Teal and Canada Goose, along with waders such as Great Blue Heron, Spotted Sandpiper, Kildeer, and a possible Willet. Four species of swallow—Violet-green, Rough-winged, Cliff and Barn—engaged in aerial acrobatics over the water, while a pair of Osprey circled above our heads. In a thicket along the riverbank, a pair of fawns grazed, seemingly undisturbed by our presence, while in the river, a lone Muskrat braved the swift-moving currents. Returning to the parking lot, we caught sight of two welcome glimmers of yellow—one offering the first hint that the sun was breaking through the clouds, and the other signaling the presence of a Western Tanager in the trees across the river. Marking our 42nd species of the day, it brought a fitting end to a walk that was, by all accounts, both productive and enjoyable.
Bighorn Canyon National Recreation AreaAfter a planned birding trip to Medicine Lodge had to be canceled due to poor road conditions, I instead led a trip to the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. Our route took us from the Lovell Visitor Center to the Caroline Lockhart Ranch. The notification of the change in plans was last-minute, so we had only four participants. It turned out to be a lovely day, however, with great birding and wildflowers.We saw a total of 59 species. Once again, Bighorn Canyon NRA demonstrated why it is on the National Parks Conservation Association’s list of the top ten birding parks!
Birds Observed at Bighorn Canyon NRA:
Membership Renewal ReminderPlease note that Meadowlark Chapter-only annual memberships expire August 31st. If you have not sent in your renewal, we would appreciate it if you would take a moment to do it now. Chapter-Only dues are still only $12 per year. Please send your dues to Donna Haman, Membership Chair, at P.O. Box 593, Cody, WY 82414. Thank you!Menu of Archived Meadowlark Newsletters:
Site posted: 2/21/02
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