Salem Audubon May Birder's Night Program

[Tim Johnson]

Hi all,

Join us for Salem Audubon's Birder’s Night - Tuesday, May 12, 6:30 - 8:00 PM (doors open at 6:00 pm). The meeting is at Salem Scottish Rite Center, 4090 Commercial St. SE, Salem, OR . Come early for refreshments, socializing and participating in the monthly raffle. Feel free to bring your full Bottle Drop donation bags or collect some new bags. It's a great way to support Salem Audubon while also recycling cans and bottles that might otherwise end up in a landfill.  

Program Title: Exploring the East Cascades Bird Alliance Winter Raptor Survey Project 

Presenter:  Jeff Fleischer. Jeff attended Oregon State University to pursue a degree in Wildlife Management and worked at Malheur NWR and Klamath Basin NWR, where he developed a keen interest in birds of prey.  He then moved to Albany, where he learned how important Linn County was for wintering birds of prey. With numerous grass seed farms, the area supports a huge rodent population. A lot of winter days spent in the field yielded hundreds of birds of prey attracted to this food base. The wildlife survey work he accomplished while working on the refuges sparked a desire to more formally census these wintering birds, which helped launch the current Winter Raptor Survey Project. The raptor survey completed its 22nd season this past winter.

Program Description: The Winter Raptor Survey Project (WRSP) is sponsored by the East Cascades Bird Alliance based in Bend, Oregon. The project was originally designed to survey only areas throughout Oregon to determine density and distribution of the wintering raptor species and tracking changes from year to year. A desire to understand how Oregon birds fit in with the rest of the Pacific NW has helped to expand the project. The Winter Raptor Survey Project is an incredible display of citizen science in serious action! The first year the project had 79 routes. By the end of this winter, that number had grown to 654 routes covering over 35,000 miles of transects and surveyed by just over 500 project volunteers throughout all of OR, ID and WA and the northern tier of CA and UT, the western half of MT, and the southern parts of British Columbia This presentation will let viewers see how this project developed and expanded over the years. It is full of photographs of all 31 species that have been found during the project surveys.    

Note: The May Salem Audubon Birder’s Night is the final meeting through the summer recess. It resumes in September. 

For those who can't join us in person, you view the meeting remotely by registering on Zoom using the following link: https://bit.ly/may26-birdersnight

Hope to see you there.

Tim Johnson

t...@salemaudubon.org