State College Bird Club Meeting
September 28, 2022


Presiding: Doug Wentzel

Recording: Peggy Wagoner Saporito

Attendance: 25

Meeting Format: This was our first in-person meeting of SCBC since February 2020. The meeting was held in the barn at Millbrook Marsh, a relatively open venue to accommodate continuing concerns with COVID 19. In addition to the announcements and presentation, the in-person venue provided an opportunity to share a few baked goods, distribute extra SCBC logo stickers and window clings and purchase Jacks Mountain hawk watch fund raiser patches and Honduran organic shade-grown coffee from Laura Jackson. As the season progresses and the weather gets colder, we will return to zoom meetings for the remainder of this year (2022). Decisions about in-person meetings for 2023 will be determined at a later date.

Board members introduced themselves and described some of their activities:

Peggy Wagoner Saporito, Secretary, reminded everyone that minutes from past meetings can be found on the club website: https://www.scbirdcl.org and are posted monthly by Bob Fowles about one week after each meeting.

Karen Kottlowski, Treasurer, collected dues from some members during the meeting.

Susan Smith, VP for Field Trips, described some of the upcoming field trips listed on our website: https://www.scbirdcl.org. Susan also coordinated production, sale and distribution of SCBC logo merchandise. The one remaining khaki hat to be sold was available at the meeting. Window clings and stickers were distributed at the meeting for free to anyone interested. These were originally produced and sold as a fund raiser and to increase club visibility. They generate far more revenue than they cost, so the remainder are being distributed for free.

Nick Bolgiano discussed the history and possible use of SCBC funds totaling around $17,000 currently in a savings account. About 50 years ago, Audubon sponsored traveling nature shows and the State College bird club hosted several such shows in local theaters. The generated revenue was originally slated for purchasing a bird sanctuary. Decades later, the bird club board decided that it did not make sense for us to purchase and operate such a sanctuary.  For a long time, this money has been sitting in a bank account. Periodically, the club has instead donated some to Clearwater Conservancy land purchases.

Recently a committee (Nick Bolgiano, Doug Wentzel and Peggy Wagoner) was formed to investigate how best to invest that money to generate annual income that the club would then donate to support conservation-related projects that are consistent with SCBC mission/vision. A list of 3-4 donation ideas would be put up for a vote among all SCBC members each year or when sufficient funds are available. No final decisions have been made regarding how the funds should be invested or used. Handing funds over to Centre Foundation which would then provide an annual payment to the club was proposed. Ideas from club members are welcomed.

Other board members at large include Bob Fowles, Jon Kauffman and Susan Braun.

Bird Club Field Trips: (Susan Smith)

The first field trip of the season was led by Julia Plummer on September 25, 2022 along Smays Run Trail, Black Moshanon State Park. Jon Kauffman will lead the next on October 2 at Dry Hollow, Rothrock State Forest and Joe Gyekis will be leading two field trips later in October; birding the PSU campus and Rhoneymeade, Centre Hall.

Announcements:

The third edition of the Breeding Bird Atlas survey is underway. This five-year project (2020-2024) documents the distribution, abundance, and timing of breeding birds. Observations are collected almost entirely by volunteers and can be submitted on ebird.

The next annual meeting of PSO (PA Society of Ornithology) will be held at Shaver’s Creek, May 19-20, 2023. With presentations by interesting speakers and field trips during the meeting, this will be a good opportunity to meet fellow birders from other areas of the state and share birding knowledge of our area.

The annual meeting of PA Native Plant Society, which is open to the public, will be held on October 15 at Shavers Creek Environmental Center. The meeting includes 3 speakers, bonus activities and a member-donated plant sale https://www.panativeplantsociety.org/2022-annual-meeting.html.

A history project to document 85 years of the SCBC since its establishment in 1941 is being considered. Doug discussed with a writer, the possibility of producing some sort of written history of the club. The writer, who would interview key people from earlier years, gave an estimate of $2000 for the project. To save money, if there is anyone interested in history and willing to dive into archived SCBC documents to create a historical narrative, please contact Doug Wentzel.

In addition to the ongoing hawk watches at Jacks and Stone mountains, there will be a special watch this fall to monitor golden eagle migration through the Bald Eagle Valley. Nick Bolgiano will be monitoring the flight starting at the end of October and continuing through about mid-December, depending upon weather conditions. On days with northwest winds, he will conduct counts from the Bald Eagle hawk watch on Karl Striedieck’s land and during days with east or southeast winds, he will be at Ralph’s Pretty Good Vista along the Allegheny Front Trail at Black Moshannon State Park on the opposite side of the valley.

Laura Jackson provided shade-grown organic coffee from Honduras for sale to the bird club this month.  She described how, since 2011, she has been working to support golden winged warbler (GWW) populations. The Jacksons are managing 27 acres of their land to create ideal GWW breeding habitat. To support their entire life cycle, Laura was hoping to work with a coffee grower in the GWW wintering area to import and sell shade-grown coffee in the US. Serendipity made her aware of a farmer in Honduras growing shade-grown organic coffee, providing ideal habitat for wintering GWW and hoping to sell his coffee in the US. Proceeds from the sale of this coffee provides support for the farmer allowing him and his family to continue providing GWW habitat as well as some support to their local bird club in Marcala Honduras.

Notable Bird Sightings:

(September, 2022; Centre and its contiguous counties)

Julia Plummer gave us a quick overview of some of the uncommon birds that were seen in the area recently. These included birds at Bald Eagle State Park, American avocets and a lesser black-backed gull. Several sighting of Connecticut warblers were recorded, as well as an evening grosbeak and several red crossbills. The winter finch forecast is available and it indicates that this could be a good winter finch year in our area with anticipated birds coming down from Canada.

Speaker: Sadikshya Sharma and Melissa Kreye: "Public Attitudes toward Birds and Private Forest Land Conservation".

Sadie Sharma, a graduate student in Forest Resources at Penn State, discussed her research into the perceptions about conservation management among landowners holding larger tracts of forested land in PA. Since half of forested land in PA is privately owned, the health and diversity of much of PA forested lands depends upon its management by these landowners. With strong private property laws, it is important to understand landowners’ perceptions and what drives landowners to make the decisions about their land that they do.

Habitat loss and loss of age diversity within forests is a major contributing factor to the decline, by 29%, of birds since 1970. Conservation land management can enhance the ecosystem services provided by diverse forests and bird populations. To encourage landowners to implement conservation measures, the forest management practices must be ecologically friendly, socially acceptable and economically viable.

Existing conservation efforts can help encourage sustainable land management practices. These include a broad range of acts, laws and incentive programs such as:

•    Federal: Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty, and US Fish and Wildlife and USDA/Natural Resources Conservation Service programs
•    State: PA Game Commission, Landowner Assistance Programs, Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
•    Private Nonprofits: Audubon, Nature Conservancy
•    Local Land Trusts: Conservancies including Brandywine, Western PA, Clearwater
•    University Partnerships: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, PSU Research and Extension.

In order to take advantage of these many programs, there is a need to understand landowners’ thinking and motivations in regards to their forest management decisions and to provide social support for their conservation efforts.

To begin, Sadie surveyed 656 landowners with large tracts of forest land throughout PA. She asked each a series of questions about their perceptions about conservation and land management.

When she asked landowners about how knowledgeable  they believed they were about birds, almost 75% felt that they had a moderate to high degree of knowledge about birds. When their factual knowledge of birds was tested less than half of the participant (44%) actually had a moderate to high level, with only 13% having a high level of knowledge of birds. This demonstrates the need for more education about birds among landowners.

Landowners’ attitude towards birds was evaluated. Only 1% of participants felt negatively and almost 60% had a positive view of birds with the remainder being neutral.

Perceptions of risks to birds and the risks associated with their habitat decline were other issues studied in the survey. Only 15% of those surveyed felt there was a high immediate risk to bird populations and their habitats, whereas 76% of respondents considered the risks would be high 10 years from now. This shows that landowners understand the risks to birds and their habitats is great, but they believe that risk is in the future, not right now. Part of the issue to risk perception is the relative short human perspective. Most of our human population was not around when bird abundance was perceptively greater, so most people don’t see or can’t perceive the decline and therefore believe it will only be an issue in the future.

The survey also showed that when it comes to attitudes about harvesting forests, half were neutral or positive. There was no difference in attitudes toward harvesting for conservation (creating diversity and healthy habitats) or for production purposes. However, over time there has been a general decline in forest harvesting which has resulted in less age diversity of forests. Timber harvesting and the subsequent potential forest age diversity can provide valuable ecosystem services. However, public support for harvesting is mixed.

When it comes to government involvement in forest management of private land, the vast majority of landowners (95%) moderately to strongly support government assistance programs whereas only 28% felt positively about government regulations on their property.

This research helps to demonstrate the need for more public education about birds and their habitat loss. Policies and financial assistance to encourage landowner to enhance their forest habitats are needed.