State College Bird Club Meeting
December 17, 2025


Presiding: Doug Wentzel

Recording: Peggy Wagoner Saporito
 
AAttendance: 34 in person/20 on zoom

Meeting Format: Hybrid: In-person and Zoom

Meeting Location: Millbrook Marsh Spring Creek Education Building (Thanks again to Susan Crandall Hart and Mandy Maguffey at Millbrook Marsh for allowing us to use this lovely room for our meetings)

Treasurer’s report:(Karen Kottlowski):

SCBC account balances: checking: $5903.99 and savings: $22580.32. Karen moved the bulk of money from the anonymous donation received earlier this year from checking into savings. Paypal which is currently unavailable for member dues or other transactions still has $550.

Thanks also to Julia Plummer, Ron Crandall and Susan Smith for completing the annual audit of Karen’s financial books which passed muster again this year.

Announcements/Other Activities:

Susan Hart gave us a rundown of the bird-related activities coming up early next year at Millbrook Marsh Nature Center (MMNC):

•    Youth Bird Club: Jon Kauffman and Susan H. are developing a 10-session program for ages 10-15, on Sundays, Feb 1-April 26 at MMNC in which  participants will build field skills in bird identification and observation with guest guides and outdoor activities. SCBC members who are interested  in helping are encouraged to contact Jon or Susan.
•    Valentines for Birds, February 7: to create edible valentines for birds.
•    Centre County Reads is highlighting the book “Crow Talk” and will include a presentation about Owls and Crows by Dr. Margaret Brittingham on March 21 at MMNC.
•    Bird and Bagels, March 28: annual event in coordination with SCBC.
•    Bird Walks with SCBC at MMNC, Tuesdays, March 31-May 5

See website for details:  https://www.crpr.org/mmnc-public-programs

Susan Smith has additional copies of the SCBC History, 1940-2023 if anyone is interested. Contact Susan for details.

Kevin Abbott, the creator of Jebebo earrings, discussed his plan to set up a focus group to help expand the creativity of his thriving nature-inspired earring business. Using recycled cereal box paperboard, Kevin has 200 bird earring designs for the niche market, selling in gift shops at nature centers, parks and other shops specializing in nature and science themed gifts in the US and Canada. Jabebo produces 2000 earrings per week to supply this market. Kevin showed us examples of his bird-themed earrings realistically representing a variety of species, each in two different poses. These are sold on holders that describe and display the habitat of each species. If you are interested in joining a discussion group that would meet twice per year, bringing nature knowledge and accumulated expertise with an interest in art to help promote biodiversity education through design, contact Kevin at Jabebo Studio, 213 E. Bishop St. Bellefonte, PA 16823, phone (814) 353-1022, website: www.jabebo.com.

We are in the midst of Christmas Bird Count season. State College and Huntingdon conducted their counts on December 14, one of the coldest CBC count days in recent memory. Sue Braun gave a brief summary of the State College CBC information that she has to date. The bitter cold with temperatures dropping from 22F to 12F as the day progressed, howling northwest wind, with gusts up to 25mph, and icy back roads made access to birding areas and birding itself quite difficult. Despite it all highlights included 210 swans, 30 ring-billed gulls, a good number of yellow-bellied sapsuckers, kinglets and even chipping sparrow and towhee.

Joe Gyekis gave a quick “Birds of Note” to highlight interesting sightings in the general central PA region during the past month. He pointed out that a good number of golden eagles have been seen migrating at Bald Eagle Hawk watch well into December. A garaney, a dabbling duck that breeds in Eurasia and winters in Africa and southern Asia, was seen in Bedford county. A snowy owl has been seen recently in Middleburg near Poppy’s Coffee Shop.

Connor Schmidt will be leading a joint Juniata Valley Audubon Society/State College Bird Club walk at the Lower Trail/Mt.Aetna on January 11 from 10:00-noon.

Speaker: Julia Plummer: “Sights and Sounds of Northern Columbia.”

This entire presentation can be viewed for a limited time at:

https://psu.zoom.us/rec/share/dUtAJEcRMRGyU9ByJw3M20hwgiu_FQM7ehII4xih0NcNcVDeaXmtGDXHdHTm3FPW.voEFPKSQmqi0tw12

Julia, a professor of Science Education at Penn State, is better known to us as a beloved, active SCBC member whose passion for birds is infectious. She is currently regional coordinator for the 3rd Pennsylvania Bird Atlas and has been, for many years, a valuable contributor to eBird, both for her sightings and audio recordings.

Inspired by her desire to contribute valuable audio recordings of bird songs and calls to Cornell Lab of Ornithology Macaulay library, Julia worked with George Armistead of Hillstar Nature tours to develop a small group tour in northern Columbia.  The four members of the tour, including their guide Hugo, spent nine days in January 2025, birding several areas including Santa Marta and Perija mountains, as well as a brief time in Camerones at lower elevation near the Caribbean coast.

Not only did Julia share delightful descriptions and stories about her sound recordings along with a few photos and videos, but she also shared her beautifully crafted watercolors of birds. Using her artistic ability was one of the ways that Julia studied some of the overwhelmingly diverse bird species of the region that are unfamiliar to North American birders.

To record bird sounds, Julia used a 22-inch diameter parabola to amplify fainter sounds when pointed directly at the source and a “shot-gun” type microphone to record louder sounds. Both devices were fitted with fuzzy wind muffs to reduce wind noise.

Her goal was to record species whose sounds are poorly represented in the Macaulay library (and elsewhere). Julia focused on species that are at various stages of endangerment from habitat loss and/or climate change. Many of the species recordings that she shared with us have been recorded only 10-15 times previously as compared to the tens of thousands of recordings of some of our familiar North American species.

Recordings of birds made by scientists and citizen scientists are used to develop the ability of the Merlin app to identify birds by sound.  A minimum of 100 recordings of a single species is needed in order for machine learning to occur for the app to begin to identify a species.

Julia’s goal was to add audio information into Macauley library through her audio recordings uploaded into eBird. During this nine-day trip Julia encountered 213 bird species and recorded 102 species in this country of over 1900 different bird species.