Since its inception in 1941, the State College Bird Club has been a fixture in the local community of Pennsylvania's Happy Valley. Today, we are a diverse group of roughly 70 local citizens dedicated to the appreciation of wild birds in central Pennsylvania. The Bird Club attracts members from many facets of our community: We are astrophysicists, school children, retirees, college students, laborers, and others, all bound by the common thread of our love for wild birds and the natural world. In a town where the local community often lives in the shadow of a major university, the State College Bird Club rises as a shining example of an organization that enjoys a mutually beneficial relationship with Penn State.

The State College Bird Club is responsible for collecting and cataloguing important information on bird populations in central Pennsylvania. In addition to year around record-keeping for the ABA's Field Notes (Audubon's former American Birds), Bird Club members participate in the Breeding Bird Survey, North American Migration Counts, the Pennsylvania Special Areas Project, Cornell's various citizen science initiatives, and, of course, the Christmas Bird Count. Bird Club members were also instrumental in the development of Pennsylvania's Breeding Bird Atlas and Merrill Woods' seminal 1952 publication, Birds of the State College Region, Pennsylvania.

Developing Bird Club efforts to promote birds and conservation include a brochure on Club activities and birding the Centre Region, a Bird Club website, a birding mentor program, and an award for local citizens and businesses that demonstrate conservation through action. We currently maintain an email listserv and a telephone calling tree to rapidly disseminate information on rare birds and other important local findings. Bird Club members make presentations to schools and other local citizen's groups, publish articles in local newspapers and state and national periodicals, and have even made birds a hot topic on a local talk radio program. The Bird Club also maintains a presence on issues of local, state, and national conservation concern. Synopses of Bird Club activities appear in our quarterly newsletter, Whip-Poor-Will.

The Bird Club holds monthly meetings from September through May, and organized field trips from September through June (all open to the public). Eight meetings per year feature seminar presentations with topics that run the gamut from Ph.D.-level original research to travelogues of birding vacations. The dedication of Bird Club members to spend time in the field and report their findings have recently established the Centre Region as one of the premiere locations in the Eastern U.S. to observe both the spring and fall migrations of Golden Eagles.

For over 50 years, the State College Bird Club has a provided a forum in which people can gather as a community to learn more about birds and about their own place in the natural world. Our vision for the next 50 years includes an expanded role as a conservation leader in our rapidly-urbanizing community, without losing sight of the reason we all got together in the first place; our never-ending fascination with the birds around us.
 

Tim O'Connell, 1998, President, The State College Bird Club