Columbus Audubon presented a $1,000 donation to the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio (NAICCO) for their “Land Back NAICCO” campaign that focuses on purchasing land for NAICCO and their important mission work. NAICCO’s goal is to reach $250,000 before the end of 2022. Currently $150,000+ has been raised for “Land Back NAICCO”. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee for Columbus Audubon had embarked on a year-long process of examining the issues related to authoring a land acknowledgment statement and presented their report and recommendation to the Columbus Audubon Board of Trustees at their September 2022 meeting and received their endorsement both for the land acknowledgment statement and a recommendation for donating to the NAICCO Land Back fund.
 
The gift was presented at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center on September 23, 2022. Columbus Audubon Trustee, Kori Sedmak presented the check and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee member, Erica Szeyller read the Land Acknowledgement statement as the donation was presented to NAICCO Executive Director, Masami Smith and NAICCO Project Director, Ty Smith. Columbus Audubon is committed to partnering with NAICCO on our shared goal of advancing the tenets of conservation in an effort to do what is best for people and birds. The two organizations have already enjoyed an afternoon together identifying birds, plants and other wildlife at Pickerington Ponds Metro Park, with plans to pursue similar activities together to be arranged by Columbus Audubon Community Outreach Coordinator, Sheila M. Fagan.

 
Columbus Audubon members are encouraged to consider donating individually to this worthwhile NAICCO campaign and may do so at this link: www.NAICCO.com

 

A CHARLEY HARPER (1922-2007) 100^TH BIRTHDAY YEAR CELEBRATION EXHIBITION (Oct. 7-Nov. 27) and GIFT SHOP (Oct. 7-Dec. 31)
View the exhibition featuring over eighty framed prints, lithographs, serigraphs, gliclees and posters. Shop the gift shop for your favorite Charley Harper merchandise including mugs, park posters, puzzles,
 t-shirts, ornaments, stationery and more! A portion of all artwork and gift shop merchandise sales benefit the Grange Insurance Audubon Center.

 

 

PUMPKIN GOURD WORKSHOP-Saturday October 29, 11a-1p
Pick your pumpkin color!  Join us Saturday, Oct. 29 and decorate your own gourd pumpkin to place on your Thanksgiving Day table! Details and registration for this workshop at https://tickets.audubon.org/grange/events/7917e125-6495-8829-cc0c-0ccaf5a48669

 

PAINT & SIP WITH WINE & CANVAS-Saturday October 29, 1p-4p
Celebrate fall and the harvest season by getting creative! Join the fun from 1-4 pm on Saturday, October 29th for an afternoon of sipping and painting with Wine and Canvas! Enjoy our indoor fire and a sip while creating your masterpiece! Cost is $40 per person and the deadline to register is 11:59 pm Thursday, October 27th. Guests must be 21 or over to attend. Wine sips available; otherwise, non-alcoholic beverages provided. Register for this Paint & Sip at https://tickets.audubon.org/grange/events/017e6f4e-4aad-f7af-eddf-b8f9490f8d71

 

FALL FAMILY FEST WITH THE SIMBA JORDAN BAND! Saturday October 29, 5p-9p
Come in your Halloween costumes or wear your cowboy hat and boots and join us for our FREE Fall Family Fest with the Simba Jordan Band. This family-friendly event features activities all evening and requires advance registration.

PUMPKIN CARVING COMPETITION -PUMPKIN LIGHTING AT FALL FAMILY FEST Saturday, October 29,
Pick up a FREE pumpkin before the Fall Family Fest! Carve and return your pumpkin to the center to enter the contest. All carved pumpkins received by Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 5pm will be entered into the contest. A limited number of FREE pumpkins will be available for pick-up on a first come, first-serve basis, however, participants can use/purchase their own pumpkins for the contest. By selecting the pumpkin entry ticket, we will notify you when pumpkins are available at the center for pickup. Please note, Free pumpkins will be available only while supplies last. Grange Insurance Audubon Center will award prizes for the most creative pumpkin entries in each of the following categories: Bird, Animal, Flower, Scariest, Funniest. Register for the competition and notification of FREE pumpkins at https://tickets.audubon.org/grange/events/018318cf-b950-ce81-b02e-b2e96873f9e8

Schedule of events included with registration:
5-7pm: Live entertainment from the Simba Jordan Band and Trunk or Tweet. Hot dogs and cider also served during this time, please note there is a separate optional food ticket.
7-9pm: Flashlight hike, carved pumpkin competition lighting and outdoor fire. Please bring your own flashlights.
 
This is an outdoor concert so be sure to bring chairs and blankets for the lawn. In case of inclement weather, the concert will move inside. You are welcome to bring your own food and drink to this event, please note that alcohol is not permitted in the park.
Register at https://tickets.audubon.org/grange/events/018318cf-b950-ce81-b02e-b2e96873f9e8
 

 

 

Do you know that birding, just like yoga, can be a meditative practice? Please consider joining Audubon on the first Friday evening of the month for our yoga and birding event with the LBGTQIA and allies community in mind. It is a judgement-free zone that begins with a gentle yoga practice for all skill levels, led by gifted yoga teacher, Andy King. The event is held at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center.

Now that nightfall is arriving earlier, the bird walk that follows the yoga session is a lantern walk with birding by ear. It’s a lovely multi-sensory experience. Our next session will be on Friday, November 4th. You may register here: https://tickets.audubon.org/grange/events/017e9ed5-bb85-d020-d21b-a05ccab03a74
 

 
The Columbus Foundation sponsors an annual Big Table discussion event, and this year, both Columbus Audubon and Grange Insurance Audubon Center Participated.  The event is about bringing the central Ohio community together to share our experiences, learn from one another and discuss how we can move our community forward toward a brighter future. The goal is to inspire a culture of connection and kindness, one conversation at a time. The Grange Audubon site was one of many around the city, all occurring on the same day.
 
Columbus Audubon Board of Trustees member, Nicole Jackson, and Community Outreach Coordinator, Sheila Fagan, participated in the Big Table discussion held on October 6th at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center. David Helm, Wild Indigo Nature Explorations Coordinator, and Sandy Libertini, Engagement Manager, both of the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, led the discussion at the particular table where Nicole and Sheila participated. Many different agencies also participated.
 

 
The topics explored included community engagement, accessibility, environmental racism, and inclusion. We concluded our discussion with possible strategies to help Black, Indigenous and People of Color feel safer in outdoor settings and feel they want to use these spaces to strengthen community relationships

 
By Rob Thorn
 

The sparrows, finches and Cardinals were hanging around the garage, and we couldn’t figure out why.   Did they have a sudden liking of gas fumes, or were they casing the joint for a break-in? Then I stepped out of the car one day and crunched a bunch of acorns, and the answer clicked on in my head. Our oaks had a good acorn year, and we’d been running over acorns, providing the birds with ready-cracked nuts. They didn’t even need to wait for our feeder to start harvesting a seed crop.
 
Wild food crops, like acorns and fruits, are more than just a curiosity; they often determine what birds will hang around this winter. Most of the insects are gone now, and their attendant flycatchers, vireos, and warblers have mostly beat a path south to warmer climes where bugs are still active. From about mid-October onward, our lists will be dominated by fruit-and-seed-eating birds. If we want to peer into a crystal ball to see if some of them will stay deep into the winter here, we need to assess how abundant fruits, seed, and nuts will be around Ohio this fall and winter. Increasingly, predicting these wild food crops is getting more uncertain.
 
Nuts are probably the most carefully watched of these wild foods, mostly because they impact several species of game animals: principally, deer, squirrels, and turkeys. For this reason, many eastern states’ Departments of Wildlife actually run surveys of the “mast crop:” mostly oak acorns and hickory nuts. Last year, for instance, was a good crop, and we had lots of jays and woodpeckers taking advantage of those nuts all winter. This year is not shaping up as well, if reports from Virginia (https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/594411455/2022-acorn-production-report-mixed-results) and West Virginia (https://wvmetronews.com/2022/09/29/research-shows-some-acorns-abundant-but-the-overall-mast-is-down-for-2022/) are any indication.

 

Fruits are a bit harder to predict. Not only are they less monitored (after all, who hunts Robins?), but they can be supplemented by large crops of fruits on invasive and planted trees. Native tree and shrub fruits include hackberries, wild grapes, sassafras, spicebush, hawthorns, and crabapples. Most of our successful invasive – read ‘honeysuckle, callery pear, and autumn olive’ - are also fruiting plants. Add in loads of landscape plants, like Bradford Pears and ornamental crabapples, and you can see why fruit-eating birds have been a growing proportion of our wintering birds for several decades. This year’s fruit crop looks mixed, with spotty crops and somewhat reduced amounts of honeysuckle, callery pear, and wild grape.

 

Seed crops are the hardest to predict, perhaps because they’re the vaguest category.   They could include tree seeds, like conifers, maple, elm, and ash, but also can take in some shrubs, and lots of herbs and grasses. The only ones easily measured are cone crops, which have often been estimated in Canada and a few southern and western states, since they can determine the availability of sprouts to re-forest clear-cut areas. For example, here’s a prediction for southern pines:  https://longleafalliance.org/longleaf-pine-cone-prospects-for-2022/. It doesn’t take a clever birder to realize that these are ‘advance menus’ for seed-eating birds.
 
So how can we tie birds to these crops?  It’s already being done for one group of birds: finches, which are more-or-less obligate seed eaters. They have unusual bills & behaviors adapted to extracting, husking, and cracking seeds, and have recently started to receive careful scrutiny as environmental biomonitors. The Finch Research Network (FIRN) has even been set up around an annual ‘finch forecast’ put out in Canada. Here’s the forecast for 2022:  https://finchnetwork.org/winter-finch-forecast-2022. This has been a long-time feature from Ron Pittaway of Ontario, but is now given more urgency with declining finch populations and climate change.  These unpredictable wild food crops might be a window into whether you’ll get more than just House Finches and Cardinals at your feeders this winter.

Once again, we offer a story by a member of the Ohio Young Birders Club. Addie Houser describes how, from a very early age, her father took her to many National Parks, sparking her passion for nature and birds. Addie’s knowledge and enthusiasm show us that the future is bright. For more information about Ohio Young Birders Club, follow this link: https://columbusaudubon.org/groups/central-ohio-young-birders/

Please read on!
 

 
Over my thirteen years of living, National Parks have been an immense part of my life. Ever since I was little, my Dad has had a great love for the outdoors and all it entails. At the age of one, he took me to one of my first National Parks: Cuyahoga Valley. This sparked a love that still burns today. He eventually introduced me to birding, which added another level of enjoyment when going to a National Park.
 
Throughout the many memories I have of being in National Parks, there are a few that stand out. One I remember clearly is when I and my Dad went to Big Bend National Park in March of 2022. We went to a campground in the park and searched for a bird, a Vermillion Flycatcher. When we finally spotted it, we followed it around the campground trying desperately to snap photos of it. Once we caught up to it, we managed to get many good pictures of this beautiful vibrant bird.

Another occasion that stands out in my memory is going to Sequoia National Park, even though I was too young to remember any birds we saw that day, I remember clearly walking through the colossal trees that were Sequoias. The trees towered over in a way that felt like dinosaurs could pass through them at any moment.

 

But Birding and exploration are not the only alluring things to me. At National Parks (and almost any other site in the park system), they had Junior Rangers. For anyone who doesn't know, to earn a Junior Ranger badge you have to complete a packet about the park site you visit and have a Park Ranger check it; once they do, you repeat an oath that varies from site to site.  As someone who loves to collect things, this came as a great appeal, and a great learning opportunity. I started collecting them when I was around one or two and I currently have seventy-nine total badges, about thirty-one are from the National Parks I’ve been to.

 

All in all, I don’t know what my life would have been like if my Dad didn’t first introduce me to these extraordinary preservations of wildlife, natural environments and history. They’ve influenced my life for the better. I wouldn't change it for the world!

Adults who want to connect kids with nature now have some expert guidance, thanks to a new online course from Bird Academy, the e-learning arm of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "Let’s Go Outside: How to Connect Kids with Birds and Nature," contains six lessons with dozens of field-tested activities to reduce screen time for kids and boost their curiosity about the natural world.
 
"I know so many people eager to get their kids outside and curious about nature," says course instructor Jennifer Fee, manager of K-12 programs at the Cornell Lab. "They ask me for fun everyday activities that fit into their busy lives. Just as importantly, outdoor activities create moments of bonding and connection—memories that last a lifetime."
 
The course material is intended for adults, such as parents, grandparents, and mentors. The activities described are appropriate for children from 6 to 10 years old. They help kids not only enjoy learning about birds and nature, but also about conservation and how to take care of the environment, no matter where they live.

"I grew up in an urban area, but there was still nature around if you knew where to look," says course instructor Nicole Jackson, a board member for the Columbus Audubon chapter, and co-organizer of Black Birder’s Week. "This course will help you make this summer boredom-proof, especially if you go into it with a 'beginner mind.'"
 
In other words, no matter how much you do or do not know about any topic, be open to seeing familiar things in a new way; for example, an American Robin is not "just" a robin. Take the time to follow what the bird is doing and how it is interacting with other birds and with the environment. Adults are encouraged to embrace the unknown and realize they don’t need to have all the answers. These are adventures in discovery for everyone involved.
 
The course includes six self-paced lessons that guide users on how to build enthusiasm for the outdoors through activities, videos, books, apps, and more. Find out more about the course and get a free preview on the course web page. Once purchased, the course material does not expire so you can return to it again and again.
 
"So many people got turned on to birdwatching during the past couple years," says Fee. "Let’s not let that spark of curiosity die out. Let's make appreciation of birds and nature a lifetime habit!"