Bird Counts
Education
Field Trips
Museum

Bird Counts

Conducted annually about December 15 in a 15-mile diameter circle around Rock Bridge Elementary School, the Columbia Christmas Bird Count (CBC) includes Missouri River bottoms, streams, woodland, prairie, and marsh.  Susan Hazelwood is the coordinator and compiler.

Members also participate in the North American Migration Count held the second Saturday in May each year.  Jim Gast (573-442-1481) is the statewide coordinator for the NAMC.

Check out the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count web page and the count analyses by the Biological Resource Division of the U.S. Geological Survey (1959-1988).  John Shipman, working with Zoological Data Processing, maintains a Christmas Bird Count database project.

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Education

Apply for a grant to fund environmental education projects or field trips for your students; priority given to ornithological studies.  Columbia Audubon also maintains a collection of environmental education materials which can be borrowed free of charge (except for shipping, if pick-up and return cannot be arranged).  A partial scholarship is available to teachers and youth leaders to attend National Audubon Society workshops.  Members of Columbia Audubon are available to assist teachers with ornithological projects either in their classrooms or on field trips.  Contact List Schenker at Columbia Audubon Society, P.O. Box 1331, Columbia, MO 65205 for additional information on any of the above programs.

Fun sites for kids and teachers:

• Not Just for Kids - Audubon Missouri
• The Life of Birds PBS series classroom resources.
• Sauquoit Valley Elementary Bird Club - This is a link in the Kirkland Bird Club web page.  You should also try their Hang Man Game.  They also have fun experiments to try at home.
• Missouri Environmental Education Association
• North American Association for Environmental Education
• Project WILD
• Leopold Education Project now available in Missouri. This project uses short monthly readings from A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. The project "helps teachers address many of the Missouri Show-Me Performance and Content Standards including language arts, social science, and science." Contact Janice Greene, state coordinator at (417)836-5306.
• EEK! Environmental Education for Kids - grades 4-8, Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources
• Bird Education Resources
• 27 Bird Education Sites - Fish & Wildlife Service list
• Environmental Education Posters
• Birds: Our Environmental Indicators - Jr. High School Curriculum
• Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History - Teacher workshops, curriculum materials, etc.
• Electronic Field Trips: Wild Wings Heading North
• Endangered Means There's Still Time - Slide show and quiz for grades 4-12 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Classroom Feeder Watch - Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
• Peterson Kids - Includes a game, coloring book, etc.
• Birding with Kids - A great family activity!
• Teen BirdChat listserv.  Send e-mail message with the word "subscribe" as the message.
• Watchlist for Kids - Includes a template to make your own bird trading cards

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CAS Field Trips

From beginning birders to experts – ALL ARE WELCOME!  For driving trips, participants carpool with all the riders chipping in to pay for the driver’s gas. Trips leave promptly at the stated departure time.  If you have doubts about whether a field trip is “on” because of inclement weather, call the trip leader up to one hour before scheduled departure.  Impromptu field trips are occasionally posted to MOBIRDS, the list-serve maintained by Audubon Society of Missouri.  We hope you enjoy this year’s field trips. Please send us your suggestions for field trips – or better yet, offer to lead one!  For upcoming field trips, please see this month's calendar in The Chat.

Columbia Audubon field trips provide an opportunity to meet new birding friends, to learn about a new area, and to polish our birding identification skills.  Field trips take many forms.  They can be an hour walk on a nature trail, a driving tour of public conservation area, a visit to a museum, a day-long trip to another part of the state, or even a winter potluck brunch observing birds from the warmth of a member's home.  We only need your imagination and willingness to lead a field trip.

I hope those of you who enjoy field trips will offer to lead at least one field trip during the coming year.  This will help us provide a good variety of field trips without overburdening just one or two people who traditionally lead the trips.

Friends have told me, "I can't lead a field trip.  I'm not an expert birder."  You don't have to be an expert birder.  It is not your job to identify the birds.  The field trip participants should work together to identify birds.  As a field trip leader, you only have three responsibilities:

• Call or e-mail Jean and let her know when and where you want to go on the field trip.  She will get it scheduled and published in The Chat.
• Make all your participants feel welcome.
• Be sure to come back with at least as many people as you left with!

Field Trip Coordinator:  Jean Leonatti, 443-5123, jleonatti@cmaaa.net.

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Museum

The Columbia Audubon Society Trailside Museum is located adjacent to the Martin Luther King Memorial in the MKT Nature and Fitness Trail Stadium Blvd parking lot.  Admission is free and open to the public.  Exhibits include bird nests and eggs, mammal skulls, butterflies, and rocks and fossils.  The museum is open for scheduled programs. It can be opened by arrangement for tours by scout troops, school classes, etc.