We had a wonderful large crowd for the annual CKAS Picnic and Pot Luck last month at Masterson Station Park. Usually, we hold this event on a weekend; moving to a weekday seemed risky. But with crazy summertime schedules, perhaps the weekday was a wise move: it was our largest turn-out in years!  After enjoying some great burgers, excellent side dishes, and super-evil desserts, several CKAS members took a walk to view the area toward the front of the park which we still hope can be used for habitat restoration. Getting a good view of the area was difficult as large swaths of space are grown up with fairly tall non-native grasses (good for red-winged blackbirds, but not much else). If we can work it out, we'll replace these non-natives with bluestems and native forbs. We also took a distant look at the nearby silos which we'd like to use for Barn Owl box placement. Everyone agreed that the two projects--habitat restoration and establishing better Barn Owl nesting space--seem to go nicely together.

With technology widely available today we can all become citizen scientists, spending a few minutes each week to collect data in our communities that will be invaluable for researchers. The smartphone in your pocket can be used as a high-tech data collection device, complete with GPS, camera, timer, and internet capabilities. Hopefully you've already heard of Audubon's Hummingbirds at Home, a continent-wide effort to track hummingbirds and identify what plants or food sources they prefer. It's free to participate and free to download the easy-to-use reporting app to your smart device. By joining and reporting data, you can become part of a network of citizen scientists helping uncover how hummingbirds are affected by climate change and providing the information necessary to devise actions to help them. In some ways, it's like eBird, but specific to hummers and their prefered nectar sources.

A quick survey of this year's data, however, shows that few CKAS members are actually chipping in to help report hummingbird sightings. The one report from Lexington for the year reads: "No Birds Seen, No Plants Seen." Sigh. No reports from Woodford County. No reports from Scott County. Only one report from Jessamine County. The exception to the norm is Boyle County, approaching two dozen reports so far this year! Bravo to Boyle County! But Danville's not the only place with hummingbirds! There are over 500 people on this e-mail list, and over 900 members of CKAS... Let's finish the summer strong -- download the app and start reporting your hummingbird sightings!
 

It's been a big fiscal year for CKAS: the first in several years where we've come out in the black. Much of the year's budget success can be attributed to our successful participation in last year's GoodGiving Challenge, which raised over $3400 towards our general fund and our endowment. A huge thanks again to everyone who pitched in time, effort, and (of course) donations to make the endeavor such a success. We have already put in our application for the 2016 Challenge, and we'll know by the end of this month whether we've been chosen to participate. Fingers crossed. It's an easy way for CKAS supporters to lend their financial support, and to have that support matched by the Challenge sponsors! We'll keep you posted.

But part of last year's financial success stemmed from having fewer project expenses. There are pros and cons to this. Pro: we saved some money; con: we could have gotten more done. Example: we probably need to set up a task force to address the Barn Owl box winery project. There are over a dozen wineries in our central Kentucky membership area, but we've only set up boxes at two so far. I will plan on bringing the winery map to an upcoming meeting with the goal of making a plan for the future--both immediate and long-term. Moving forward will take contacting some winery owners, visiting their vineyards to see what sort of box installations would work best, and then setting to building and installing. The boxes we've set up so far have not yet attracted a barn owl, but we're hopeful since we know he owls are in the area. The greater the number of suitable nesting areas, the more likely a pair of owls are to take up house. So let's make it a priority for next year.