By Carl Runge
What we all hope will be the first annual Vermont-New Hampshire Birders Conference was held at the beautiful Lake Morey Resort in Fairlee, VT on October 15-16. Sponsored by VINS and New Hampshire Audubon, it was a great success. Saturday, a wet dreary day, fortunately consisted of indoor events with many interesting presentations. The keynote speaker was Steve Kress of Ithaca,NY, who spoke about his pioneering work leading to the recolonization of puffins, terns, and murres to their historic nesting islands off the coast of Maine. Steve also gave a very practical talk on gardening strategies to attract birds and butterflies to one’s yard.
Some of the other presentations included a workshop by Bryan Pfeiffer on birding for beginners and intermediates, and a talk by Allan Strong on his grassland bird research in the Champlain Valley. Eric Hanson discussed his work with loon recovery, Roz Renfrew told about her discoveries regarding winter Bobolink habitat in South America, and Kent McFarland and Chris Rimmer presented findings from their Bicknell’s Thrush research on Vermont mountaintops. Presentations were also made on two of VINS statewide citizen science projects: Steve Faccio spoke about the Forest Bird Monitoring Program and Dan Lambert spoke about Mountain Birdwatch. Other talks were equally interesting.
Sunday was devoted to field trips. The day was dry, but windy and cloudy. One group went to the NE Kingdom and northern New Hampshire. We chose the trip to Herrick’s Cove led by Chris Rimmer and Bill Shepard. This turned out to be a fascinating location with many interesting birds seen. The storms of the previous few days had apparently kept a number of migrating birds down to forage. The specialties of the day were raptors and sparrows. We saw Sharp-shinned, Cooper’s, and Red-tailed Hawks, an Osprey, Northern Harriers, Merlins, and Peregrine Falcons. Sparrows included Fox, Song, Swamp, Lincoln’s, White-throated, White-crowned, and juncos. Our list also included Hermit Thrush, both kinglets, Cedar Waxwing, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, and Eastern Towhee.
All in all it was a very satisfying weekend. Let’s hope that the interest and effort will be sustained, and that this will become a popular annual event.
