President’s Message

Hello my little birding friends! Hope you are all well and dealing with this Covid thing. It’s such an inconvenience and really putting a toll on people. I can’t wait for it to go away and hope it does soon. I almost wish I was a bird. They fly around without a care in the world. Find a nice place to live that doesn’t cost anything and build it themselves the way they want. They eat what they want and don’t gain weight. They don’t have to deal with potholes and bad patch up jobs that make your whole car rattle when you go over all of them. Or the idiots on their cell phones or the ones who weave in and out of traffic or don’t put on their lights when it’s foggy, dark or raining. No wonder there’s so many accidents. Then there’s the litterbugs. I stopped at the light by hospital road and looked to my left to see so much garbage that people throw out of their car windows. One day while I was stopped at a light, a couple walking by had just stopped at a nearby 7 eleven. The guy unwrapped his ice cream and threw the wrapper on the ground. I yelled out the window at him that he dropped something and he looked at me like I had 2 heads! Why can’t they save it until they get home?

I was watching a show on the Nature channel the other day about rabbits and hares. The Antelope Jack Rabbits, which are really hares, live in North America in a dessert environment, with cacti, grasses and some bushes. Harris hawks like to eat them and hunt in groups. A group of three spotted a hare. One hawk followed it and flushed it out while the others waited until the right moment to pounce. It was amazing how they coordinated it. Every time I watch these shows they add something about global warming. Some people don’t believe there’s a global warming problem, but most do. I always save articles about it. I have found some from 2017 and we still have the some of the same problems because nothing has been done. One article was from August 2019 about some lakes and ponds and harmful blooms. Their safety tips were not to swim, fish, boat or wade in the areas with blooms. Don’t eat the fish caught in these areas, rinse the water off yourself, don’t drink it and don’t let your pet swim where there are blooms. How fun is that? Does anyone remember the days when we could swim in lakes without a care in the world? I remember going to Fire Island when I was a little girl on our family boat. We would leave early, go to the other side of the bay and drift for crabs. I was about 8 or 9 years old and would stand on the bow of the boat and direct my dad where the crabs were. The bay was so clean and clear that I could see them in the seaweed! When we got a bushel we would head over to Lega Beach, which is now Davis Park, beach the boat on one of the sand spits and spend the day. There are no longer sandpits, as they washed away over the years. Yup, erosion, climate change and global warming. We have to do our part to help our planet!! 

We’ve started having our monthly meetings at Seatuck again, but will have our January, February, and March meetings via zoom, then continue meetings at Seatuck. Hope you can make it. Since this newsletter has been quarterly, I have to mention Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, a Happy and Healthy New Year, and Happy birding!