Join Menunkatuck Audubon and CPEN as they host the Fall 2024 All Things Pollinator with educational booths, kids’ activities, give-aways, and sale of plants from the UrbanScapes nursery.

Huge Native Plant Sale
Over 60 species

Exhibitors include:

• Menunkatuck Audubon- Bird Friendly Native Plants

• Highstead Ecotype Plants and Mason Bee Habitat

• CT-NOFA, ECO 59, Ecotype Project- Native ecotype seed- Food and Pollinator Connection

• Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station

• Pollinator Pathway- Pollinator Pathways in CT

• WildOnes- Landscaping with Natives

• Xerces Society- Pollinator Education and Children's Activities

• See a Bee Hive and Meet the Beekeeper

• Learn How to Identify Native Plants Using Your Smartphone

Celebrate World Migratory Bird Day by joining Menunkatuck and New Haven Parks' Ranger Harry Coyle for a leisurely canoe trip up the West River in New Haven We will start at the Barnard Nature Center and canoe upstream past the Westville Music Bowl and through Edgewood Park as far as the water level allows.

Lingering birds may include Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, late migrating sandpipers, and Belted Kingfishers. Binoculars will be helpful. Bring water and a snack.

Parks will have eight canoes for 2-3 people per canoe. Bring your own canoe or kayak if you have one.

Registration is required for use of a Parks canoe. Register here.

High wind, rain, temperature below 60 cancel.

Join us for a special community program live from Dnipro, Ukraine, with Ukrainian birder Oleksandr Nastachenko. Because of the time difference between Ukraine and here, we’ve scheduled it for Saturday, October 12, at noon, 7:00 pm in Ukraine.

Dnipro is a city in the eastern part of Ukraine, about 100 miles from Russian occupied areas. Before the Russian invasion Oleksandr traveled throughout Ukraine on his birding adventures. He is now mostly limited to the city limits and even then some sites are out of limits because of their military value.

Oleksandr writes:

I want to tell you that even despite the war, such a hobby as birding in Ukraine has not lost its significance. This hobby continues to gain momentum in the country. People want to do what they love and even find new species of birds for the country's fauna! Birds help us to escape from the many incredible problems and fears that people living in peaceful countries where there are no wars do not face. Birds help us live and this is no exaggeration! Birds help us if there is a serious illness, if you are scared, if you do not know how to live on. Birding saves!

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Ponds, rivers, streams, and marshes are our most biologically diverse environments. Though two streams or ponds may be only a mile apart, each could harbor a unique mix of species, particularly when separated by the hilly landscapes familiar across southern New England. That very diversity can also make life in ponds, rivers, and streams vulnerable: rivers contain more varieties of threatened or endangered wildlife than any other environment.

Patrick Lynch’s talk will look at the variety of birds and other wildlife in freshwater environments and ways to enhance your wildlife viewing to include the myriad other creatures living in our southern New England wetlands — all while keeping your feet dry.

Patrick J. Lynch is the author of many field guides, the most recent of which is A Field Guide to the Connecticut River: From New Hampshire to Long Island Sound, published by Yale University Press in April 2024. His previous books include A Field Guide to North Atlantic Wildlife: Marine Mammals, Seabirds, Fish, and Other Sea Life; A Field Guide to the Southeast Coast & Gulf of Mexico: Coastal Habitats, Seabirds, Marine Mammals, Fish, & Other Wildlife; A Field Guide to Long Island Sound: Coastal Habitats, Plant Life, Fish, Seabirds, Marine Mammals, and Other Wildlife; A Field Guide to Cape Cod: Including Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island, and Eastern Long Island; and A Field Guide to the Mid-Atlantic Coast.

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Join Menunkatuck Audubon Society at the Henry Whitfield State Museum in Guilford for Nature Stewards Field Day. We will share information about our local conservation work and have plants from UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery for sale.

Owls and turtles and bees, oh my! See live animals and discover ways to be a better nature steward from people doing the work.

• Well-Comb Home will display an observation beehive and have their local honey and beeswax products for sale.

• See – and even pet – some of Turtle Haven’s rescued and rehabilitating turtles.

• Learn how to help save displaced and orphaned wildlife with Little Rascals Rescue and Rehabilitation & Raccoon Crossing, Inc.

• See monarch butterflies and discover more about native plants and creating pollinator pathways with Quercus Works Gardens.

Special presentations will take place throughout the afternoon. At 1:00 pm, meet a Great Horned Owl, Peregrine Falcon, Eastern Screech-Owl, and Broad-Winged Hawk in a birds of prey presentation by Rose Crisci of Blue Moon Raptors. Angelina Carnevale from Turtle Haven will introduce some of her turtle ambassadors and talk about how to help wild turtles and pet turtles thrive at 2:00 pm. Tour the museum’s 4-month-old native pollinator garden at 3:00 pm with Heather Bradley from Quercus Works Gardens to find out how she installed it and chose the different plants.

A craft area will feature supplies and instructions to make shadow drawings from nature. All ages are invited to pick up their supplies and then explore the museum’s beautiful grounds to find their artistic subject, whether it’s a branch of a majestic red oak tree, a bloom on a native plant in the pollinator garden, or anything else that inspires them.

Admission to the program, the Whitfield House, and the exhibit galleries is free and the event will be held rain or shine. Support provided by Connecticut Humanities.

Join us for this special webinar celebrating the launch of Lights Out Connecticut’s new educational tool, a 5-day lesson plan for Connecticut middle-school science classrooms to promote learning on light pollution and its impacts on migratory birds. In the lesson plan, students learn about how and why birds migrate through Connecticut, discover how human development can negatively impact migratory birds during migration, and help come up with solutions. Written by Catherine Ferreri, a Connecticut middle-school educator, the learning module equips science students with age-appropriate information and critical thinking skills to answer questions like—why do birds migrate, what species of birds migrate near me, what kinds of foods do they eat during migration, and why are migratory birds an important part of ecosystems? The launch is specially timed for the start of fall bird migration in Connecticut on August 15. Our hope is that this educational resource, which meets  Next Generation Science Standards, will foster greater appreciation and care for migratory birds and the night sky by young people and local communities in Connecticut. This project was funded by the Hartford Audubon Society and individual donations to Lights Out Connecticut. 

Format: Interview with Catherine Ferreri, lesson plan author and science teacher at Coleytown Middle School in Westport, CT; and Meredith Barges, lesson plan co-developer and co-chair of Lights Out Connecticut.

Register for the Zoom link.

Join Menunkatuck, the Land Trust of West Haven, and  ArtsWest CT for a reception with introductions to neighbors who are active tribal members, authors, environmental advocates, and researchers,

There will be a discussion with Q&A to learn more about their work, our community, and each other.

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.

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Join Highstead, Menunkatuck Audubon, and CPEN as they host the Fall 2024 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

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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.

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The Guilford Keeping Society invited Menunkatuck to sell plants from UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery at their June 8 fundraiser.

We will bring a selection of the perennials and shrubs that we are growing at our nursery in New Haven. All of the plants are straight natives, no cultivars or nativars.

We will also have information about the important role that native plants play in the environment and other measures that you can take to help create healthy and viable ecosystems and habitat for people, birds, and other wildlife.

Light pollution has robbed us from experiencing the night sky. With this loss humans have suffered from insomnia, stress, and increased cancer rates.

Join us as we explore the human connection to the cosmos focusing on mythologies, human health, and well-being.

Presenter Craig Repasz is cochair of the Lights Out Connecticut project of Menunkatuck. He is also the President of the Friends of Stewart B McKinney NWR, an organization devoted to supporting this important refuge. He enjoys backpacking and conducts Mountain Birdwatch surveys for the Vermont Center of Ecostudies, focusing on the Bicknell’s Thrush and other high elevation species.

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Are you at all curious about the birds that live in urban habitats? If so, join us Thursday, May 30, at 6:00 PM, for a neighborhood-based accessible birding event! You might be surprised by the range of species we uncover! CPEN and Menunkatuck Audubon are at the Learning Corridor in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood. to celebrate #BlackBirdersWeek. The trip will take us along the Farmington Canal Trail searching for the wide variety of birds that can be found in an urban neighborhood.

The outing is accessible for people with mobility challenges and is appropriate for families and beginners. The Farmington Canal Trail and the sidewalks are paved and level. Binoculars will be provided.

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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.

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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.

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Presented by Meredith Barges, Co-Chair of Lights Out Connecticut, bird-friendly building advocate, and former policy researcher at the Yale Bird-Friendly Building Initiative. Through her work, Meredith helps people to understand and appreciate the complex lives of birds, how birds interact with the built environment, and how our decisions about buildings, lighting, and landscaping affect bird populations. She helped to lead the successful campaign to pass Connecticut's new lights out law, Public Act 23-143, in 2023. She also co-authored Building Safer Cities for Birds: How Cities Are Leading the Way on Bird-Friendly Building Policy (American Bird Conservancy & Yale Law School, 2023).

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Fun, free, family-friendly activities at Newhallville’s Learning Corridor.,

• Bird Walks

• Bird-friendly Gardening Tips

• Native Plants for Sale

• Scavenger Hunt

• Information about New Haven’s Urban Oases and Schoolyard Habitats

• Learn about the amazing distances that some birds travel in migration

• Kids’ activities

• Pancake breakfast 10:00-12:00

Live Raptor Show - 12:30

Live bird shows are not being offered because of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza.

Sponsored by Audubon Connecticut, Menunkatuck Audubon Society, and Community Placemaking Engagement Network.

The Long Island Sound Study is inviting residents of communities near Long Island Sound and throughout the watershed to attend an in-person or virtual public engagement session in May to learn about the challenges facing the Sound and the progress being made in its restoration. Attendees will be able to provide comments on what issues are important to them, which will be used to revise the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan, or CCMP, in 2025.   

Six in-person sessions, scheduled for daytime and evening, are scheduled for sites in Suffolk County, Queens, and New Haven along with three virtual sessions. Menunkatuck is cosponsoring the New Haven sessions.

The CCMP addresses current and emerging issues for Long Island Sound: clean water, thriving habitats and abundant living resources, sustainable and resilient communities, and public involvement and stewardship. The Long Island Sound Study, a partnership of federal and state agencies working with local governments, communities, universities, and industry uses the CCMP as a blueprint to develop specific, measurable objectives to improve the health of the Sound and to commit to action plans to achieve them. It was last revised in 2015. You can find out more about the update plans here: A New Plan for 2025-2035.

The meetings will include: 

• A presentation on Long Island Sound, progress and challenges, and opportunities to help set future goals and action plans

• Tabling/Breakout sessions to brainstorm and gather feedback from participants on issues and objectives, hear what’s important to attendees

• Plenary discussion of comments/feedback

• Ideas for renaming the program

• Review of next steps 

This is a broad stakeholder meeting – all interested in Long Island Sound are invited!  

The Long Island Sound Study is inviting residents of communities near Long Island Sound and throughout the watershed to attend an in-person or virtual public engagement session in May to learn about the challenges facing the Sound and the progress being made in its restoration. Attendees will be able to provide comments on what issues are important to them, which will be used to revise the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan, or CCMP, in 2025.   

Six in-person sessions, scheduled for daytime and evening, are scheduled for sites in Suffolk County, Queens, and New Haven along with three virtual sessions. Menunkatuck is cosponsoring the New Haven sessions.

The CCMP addresses current and emerging issues for Long Island Sound: clean water, thriving habitats and abundant living resources, sustainable and resilient communities, and public involvement and stewardship. The Long Island Sound Study, a partnership of federal and state agencies working with local governments, communities, universities, and industry uses the CCMP as a blueprint to develop specific, measurable objectives to improve the health of the Sound and to commit to action plans to achieve them. It was last revised in 2015. You can find out more about the update plans here: A New Plan for 2025-2035.

The meetings will include: 

• A presentation on Long Island Sound, progress and challenges, and opportunities to help set future goals and action plans

• Tabling/Breakout sessions to brainstorm and gather feedback from participants on issues and objectives, hear what’s important to attendees

• Plenary discussion of comments/feedback

• Ideas for renaming the program

• Review of next steps 

This is a broad stakeholder meeting – all interested in Long Island Sound are invited!  

Native plants and other things birds look for in the landscape, and why they need to be there.

Many property owners and landscapers want to help the planet by adding Native plants to their managed landscapes, but there can be some concern – certain Native plants can look downright sloppy, which makes some of our two-legged neighbors rather unhappy. Then again, it really doesn't have to be that way. If well-mannered native plants with excellent habitat services are chosen, we can have both esthetically pleasing properties, and excellent environmental services

Sadly, because of habitat loss, climate change and other issues, which are covered in the presentation, our wildlife numbers are in steep decline. By using our landscapes, we can help our wild aerial and terrestrial neighbors increase their numbers. Becoming a good environmental steward by designing and installing eco-friendly, attractive, environmentally functional landscapes can help restore balance and create safe harbors for wildlife in otherwise sterile locations. By blending aesthetics and ecology, with thoughtful consideration toward plant selection, habitat factors and gardening practices, landscapes that are both attractive and environmentally functional can be created. Please bring any questions, your curiosity, and an open mind.

Topics covered:

• The necessity for native plant usage

• Ecosystem services that plants provide

• The importance of choosing plants with excellent ecosystem value

• Healthy an sustainable landscape practices – how to handle issues until nature balances them

• Steps for the Future: Creating habitat, education, outreach, and advocacy

Joyann Cirigliano is Senior Coordinator of Bird-friendly Communities at the Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center, and is a Certified Nursery and Landscape Professional and a Certified Wildlife Landscaping Professional. She is past president of Four Harbors Audubon Society on Long Island.

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The Guilford Conservation Commission is sponsoring a community-wide Earth Day Celebration on Guilford Town Green on Sunday afternoon, April 21, 2024 from 1:00 – 4:00. Menunkatuck will be there.

These celebrations will honor the environmental legacy and spirit of the first Earth Day, which was held on April 22, 1970, by acknowledging the seriousness of today’s climate crisis and by affirming the ways in which residents of our town, region, and state are responding to the environmental crisis of human-caused global warming.

Join us to learn about our conservation programs including native plants for natural climate solutions, marsh migration, homes for birds, and lights out.

Connecticut salt marshes have suffered losses of 27% since 1900 and continue to decline despite that passage of tidal wetland legislation in the 1970’s. Along the densely-populated Connecticut shoreline, these habitats are squeezed by rising seas on one side and development (homes, seawalls, roadways, and other hard structures) that prevent marshes from migrating landward.

The impacts of these losses are many and growing. Saltmarsh Sparrow populations have declined by over 80%, and may go extinct in our lifetime. Unhealthy marshes will no longer provide important buffers for local communities against major storms. Before it's too late for birds and people, Audubon and partners across the coast are taking action on-the-ground. 

In this presentation, Corrie Folsom-O’Keefe, director of conservation for Audubon Connecticut, will describe three projects on which Audubon is working to implement strategies that will increase the resilience and slow the loss of current salt marsh and associated species, and facilitate the effective transition of upland habitats to functional tidal marsh.

The three marshes are Guilford’s East River Marsh, Great Meadows Marsh in Stratford, and the newest at Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison. Each marsh has unique characteristics that require different strategies for restoration. Corrie will outline the strategies and explain how the ways they work to restore the marshes to provide improved ecosystem services.

Corrie Folsom-O’Keefe is the Director of Bird Conservation for Audubon Connecticut, the state office of the National Audubon Society. In this position she oversees Audubon’s on the ground coastal stewardship and resilience efforts. Corrie leads the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds, which assists the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s Wildlife Division with the management of the Piping Plover and other beach-nesting birds. She also co-leads the WildLife Guards and Salt Marsh Stewards programs which educates, mentors, and employs Bridgeport, West Haven, and Stratford high school students as coastal bird stewards. 

Corrie completed her master’s degree at Connecticut College. She has conducted field work involving birds in Belize, the Bahamas, Nova Scotia, the Farallon Islands, and Connecticut; gained significant experience as an educator while employed at The Children’s Museum; and enjoys flying airplanes and playing mandolin in the bluegrass band, Sperry Creek. 

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Think of this presentation as the her-story of birding.

Join Bird Diva Bridget Butler as she shares the lost legacy of women in ornithology and the celebration of noticing female birds. Let’s face it: there’s a bit of bias in the birding world when it comes to females. Bridget breaks down this bias by looking at current research on gender and birding, retelling the stories of the Mothers of Ornithology, and making the connection to the current science on female birds. You'll be surprised by what has been forgotten and how we can change the narrative moving forward to better support both the birding community and conservation!

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In 2019 Audubon released its scientific report, Survival by Degrees: 389 Species on the Brink. Audubon scientists took advantage of 140 million observations, recorded by birders and scientists, to describe where 604 North American bird species live today—an area known as their “range.” They then used the latest climate models to project how each species’s range will shift as climate change and other human impacts advance across the continent.

The results are clear: Birds will be forced to relocate to find favorable homes. And they may not survive.

Also in 2019, Science published a report that showed the total breeding bird population in the continental U.S. and Canada has dropped by 29 percent since 1970. That percent represents almost 3 billion birds lost.

What to do?

Over the past year, Audubon has crafted an exciting new five-year strategic plan. The aptly named Flight Plan focuses on three core strategic drivers:  a hemispheric approach to bird conservation, finding climate crisis solutions, and ensuring all people feel included and empowered in the movement to protect birds.

in this presentation, Mike Burger, Executive Director of Audubon Connecticut/New York, will describe how the Audubon staff, Chapters, Board, and members, are positioned to inspire, influence, innovate, and achieve results at unprecedented scale. The Strategic Plan orients all of Audubon toward achieving a singular goal of Bending the Bird Curve: halting, and ultimately reversing, the precipitous decline of birds across the Americas.

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This year the Connecticut State Legislature is meeting in a “short session”. Audubon has several areas in which legislation is sought to protect birds and the places they need. Among these are legislation regarding:

• Adding additional regulation on the use of anticoagulant rodenticide poisons which cause the death of raptors that eat poisoned rodents

• Regulating neonicotinoids for non-agricultural use

• Protecting vulnerable communities from climate change by supporting urban forestry and community interest in tree planting and maintenance, parks, and/or community gardens in densely populated areas

Join us as we host Robert LaFrance, Director of Policy for Audubon Connecticut, for a discussion of these and other legislative initiatives and learn what you can do to help getting them passed. Rob had a long career with DEEP as its legislative liaison and brings long relationships with legislators to Audubon.

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Each February, for four days the world comes together to admire birds during the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). Participants spend time in their favorite places observing and counting as many birds as they can find and report their findings. This helps scientists better understand global bird populations. This year's count is February 16-19—we hope you'll join us this year!

Menunkatuck’s partner in the UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery has organized family-friendly urban bird counts in three New Haven parks on Saturday, February 17.

Meet at West River Memorial Park at 9:00 (map), Beaver Pond Park at 10:30 (map), or the Learning Corridor at noon. (map)

Menunkatuck will be at West River where we have done earlier GBBCs. Please join us there.

Youth and adult binoculars available. Hot chocolate and muffins will be provided.

As birders and wildlife enthusiasts, we can't help but marvel at large gatherings of birds. Many bird species spend time in flocks that can range in size from just a few birds to tens of thousands, even millions. Flocks of birds, whether they be in the air or on the ground, can offer a magnificent spectacle. Gina Nichols’ presentation asks the question, why do birds form flocks? It explores the phenomenon of bird gatherings with vivid photographs, anecdotes and video clips and delves into the intriguing dynamics of assemblies of birds. The choreography of mass movements such as starling murmurations is examined and the benefits of flocking behavior are examined as they relate to breeding, protection, and even avian baby sitting services. The advantages and disadvantages of flocking are discussed and collective names used to identify groups of birds are presented.

A naturalist and birder for more than thirty years, Gina first became fascinated with the natural world in rural upstate New York where she spent most of her childhood out of doors. In 2005, Gina founded Sunrise Birding, LLC to offer personalized, authentic, affordable private and small group bird watching and wildlife tours around the world.

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