Vultures are often overlooked, under-appreciated, and unloved, despite the vital roles they play in healthy ecosystems. Worldwide, vultures are primarily scavengers; they can help stop the spread of disease by quickly and efficiently removing dead animals from the landscape. Unfortunately, due to poisoning, direct persecution, habitat loss, and other threats, vultures are more likely to be threatened or endangered than any other group of raptors. But in the Western Hemisphere, Turkey and Black Vultures counter this trend and are increasing in number.
Based on Katie Fallon’s recent book, this fun presentation will explore the life and times of the noble Turkey Vulture, including its feeding, nesting, and roosting habits, migratory behaviors, and common misconceptions. Katie will also discuss what it’s like to be up-close-and-personal with Turkey and Black Vultures through her work with the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia.
Katie Fallon is the author of the nonfiction books Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird (2020, 2017) and Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird (2011), as well as two books for children. She is a founder of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, a nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving the region’s wild birds through research, education, and rehabilitation, and has served as President of the Mountaineer Chapter of the National Audubon Society. A member of the International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators, Katie has worked with birds since 1998; over the last twenty years she has given educational presentations featuring live raptors, vultures, parrots, and corvids. She is also a columnist for Bird Watcher’s Digest and has taught writing at West Virginia University, Virginia Tech, and elsewhere. Her first word was “bird.” For more: www.katiefallon.com.
Once considered a wasted resource and a hazard in forest landscapes, dead trees and logs are now known to be valuable and essential parts of a healthy forest ecosystem. Join Margery Winters of the Roaring Brook Nature Center to learn how they provide habitat and food for many terrestrial and aquatic species, act as seedbeds for new trees, and serve as a source of water, energy, carbon, and nutrients for the entire forest.
For a relatively small state, Connecticut is blessed with two of the nation's largest and most biologically significant estuaries — places where salty ocean water mixes with freshwater. The Connecticut River and Long Island Sound estuaries are two of the planet's most productive ecosystems, and these are no hidden treasures. International groups have long recognized the wildlife riches of our region, as we've seen in the recent Federal designation of parts of our coast and rivers within the new National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR).
The lower Connecticut River is the most pristine large-river tidal marsh system in the Northeast, thanks mainly to the lack of a major port at or near its mouth. Constantly shifting sandbars and sediment reefs have always made the lower Connecticut River a difficult place for larger ships. The lack of an urban, industrialized port has preserved the unspoiled rural character of the landscape around the river and protected its many brackish and freshwater environments.
In addition to hosting large populations of migratory waterfowl, the rich tidal marshes of the Connecticut are home to several rare, threatened, or endangered species, including the Bald Eagle, Shortnose Sturgeon, Puritan Tiger Beetle, and the tiny, beach-nesting Piping Plover and Least Tern. This talk will look at some of the glories of our local shore and river wildlife, and the likely impact of human activity and climate change on the Sound and the River.
Naturalist Patrick J. Lynch spent years researching the Connecticut River for his new book A Field Guide to the Connecticut River: From New Hampshire to Long Island Sound. The book offers an expansive guide to this majestic region with more than 750 original maps, photographs, and illustrations. Organized around environments rather than particular locations, the book includes geological overviews and descriptions of common plants and animals. Lynch also explains the landscape’s environmental history as well as the effects of centuries of human interventions and the growing fallout from climate change.
Join Highstead, Menunkatuck Audubon, and CPEN as they host the third All Things Pollinator with educational booths, kids’ activities, give-aways, and sale of plants from the UrbanScapes nursery.
Tentative exhibitors include:
Highstead — Ecotype Project, Sowing Seeds and Transplanting
CT-NOFA —Eco-region 59, Ecotype Project, Native ecotype seed, Food and Pollinator Connection
Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station — How to Survey a Flower Garden for Bumble Bees
Pollinator Pathways — Pollinator Pathways in CT
Wiggle Room — Worms and Healthy Soils
Menunkatuck Audubon — Bird friendly native plants
Audubon Connecticut — Bird friendly native plants
WildOnes — Landscaping with Natives
Kellogg Environmental Center — Kids Exploration Pollinators
New Haven Public Free Library — Seed library
Climate change is a global phenomenon that is negatively impacting ecosystems around the world. Urban areas, and urban forests specifically, experience these negative impacts especially acutely. While urban forests and trees in cities are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change they are also capable of mitigating climate change and helping to offset its negative impacts.
In this talk, Dr. Danica Doroski, State Urban Forestry Coordinator for Connecticut will explain how climate change impacts trees and forests within the urban matrix, how these urban trees and forests can in turn help to offset climate change and discuss what this means for the management of Connecticut’s urban forests and beyond.
Danica had been working in urban forestry and related fields for the past 10 years as a horticulturalist at the Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia, PA, Volunteer Coordinator for the New York Restoration Project in New York City, NY, Outreach Coordinator for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and most recently as Statue Urban Forestry Coordinator with Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. She holds a BA from Bates College in Maine, a MFS from the Yale School of the Environment, and a PhD from the Yale School of the Environment.