Saturday, May 18th is the date, from 10am to 3pm, with a keynote speaker at 3:30.  This year’s speaker is Brian Jorg from the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens.

Bird-related crafts and nature education booths will entertain the kids. By completing five of the activities, they can earn a nature patch featuring our beautiful Audubon Miami Valley logo.

Local organizations will be on hand to offer tips for families who want to get their children outdoors and enjoying nature.  Look for our new “No Child Left Inside” booth for information.

Bird walks will be offered for all ages, led by an experienced “birder”.  Bring your binoculars, or try out some of ours.  Learn to recognize birds by sight and by their songs.

Raptor, Inc. and Hueston Woods will have live birds on display. Licensed bird-banders will explain the importance of their research at a demonstration banding station.

Tell your gardening friends about our Native Plant Sale at the Festival!  Native plants attract birds and butterflies to your yard and offer them important habitat in our built-up world.

Music and food concessions will help make this a most enjoyable outing for your family.

The theme this year, “Save the Big Woods”, highlights our chapter’s habitat restoration project, funded by a Togethergreen grant from Toyota and National Audubon Society.

Volunteers work to remove invasive plants from the Hueston Woods Nature Preserve (a designated Important Bird Area), in order to protect native wildflowers and young trees.  While you are here, take the time to walk one of the lovely woodland trails.

Please join us!

~Gail Reynolds, President, Audubon Miami Valley

Monday, May 13, 2013 “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Hog Island” with Ben and Lynne Mattox of the Talawanda Schools, 7:30 p.m., 2nd Floor Community Room, Lebanon Citizens National Bank, 30 Park Place West, Oxford, Ohio.  

Ben and Lynne Mattox, the proud recipients of the AMV scholarship spent a wonderful week at Maine Audubon’s Hog Island workshop for environmental educators this July. During their presentation they will present a slide show documenting their experience and share how the workshop has influenced their teaching of environmental concepts to students this year. They had many first time experiences including bird sightings, geological structures, stars visible only where the lights do not shine at night, as well as botanical treasures, none of which will soon be forgotten.

Ben is currently in his 26th year of teaching science, 24 of those years teaching mostly biology and botany at Talawanda High School. Environmental education has always been an important part of the curriculum in these courses. Ben has a B.S. in Biological Education and an M.A.T. in Biological Science, both from Miami University.

Lynne is currently in her 22nd year of teaching, again most of that time teaching for Talawanda Schools. Lynne is an Intervention Specialist (Special Education teacher), and also includes environmental concepts in her lessons. At times she gets a chance to co-teach and actually teaches science lessons. Lynne has a B.S. in Special Education and an M.A.T. in Biological Science, both from Miami University.

The May 4 field trip, led by Sam Fitton, will leave at 6:30 a.m. from the former WalMart parking lot (on Locust Street next to McDonald’s) and return to Oxford in the afternoon. For those wishing to join the group at the Preserve, projected arrival time is about 8:00 a.m. Participants are asked to pack a lunch and bring binoculars if possible.

“Audubon Miami Valley Bird Festival” - we’ve changed the name, but this popular event is still FUN, FREE, and FAMILY-FRIENDLY!   The location is the same, too:  Hueston Woods State Park, near the Nature Center.

Saturday, May 18th is the date, from 10am to 3pm, with a keynote speaker at 3:30.  This year’s speaker is Brian Jorg from the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens!

Bird-related crafts and nature education booths will entertain the kids. By completing five of the activities, they can earn a nature patch featuring our beautiful Audubon Miami Valley logo.

Local organizations will be on hand to offer tips for families who want to get their children outdoors and enjoying nature.  Look for our new “No Child Left Inside” booth for information.

Bird walks will be offered for all ages, led by an experienced “birder”.  Bring your binoculars, or try out some of ours.  Learn to recognize birds by sight and by their songs.

Raptor, Inc. and Hueston Woods will have live birds on display. Licensed bird-banders will explain the importance of their research at a demonstration banding station.

Tell your gardening friends about our Native Plant Sale at the Festival!  Native plants attract birds and butterflies to your yard and offer them important habitat in our built-up world.

Music and food concessions will help make this a most enjoyable outing for your family.

Our theme this year, “Save the Big Woods”, highlights our chapter’s conservation project, funded by a Togethergreen grant from Toyota and National Audubon Society. Volunteers are working to remove invasive plants from the Hueston Woods Nature Preserve, in order to protect native wildflowers and young trees.  While you are here, take the time to walk one of the lovely woodland trails.

Please join us!

~Gail Reynolds, President

Audubon Miami Valley

Audubon Miami Valley initiated a major conservation project this spring in the Hueston Woods State Nature Preserve, which is designated an Important Bird Area (IBA).  The project is under the direction of Dick Munson, AMVs Conservation Chair and Gail Reynolds, AMV President and a recent recipient of a TogetherGreen Fellows grant, awarded by Toyota and National Audubon Society.

The project involves removing invasive species, including garlic mustard, honeysuckle, and other exotics that occur in one of the richest wildflower areas in southwestern Ohio. The TogetherGreen grant will provide funds for the first year of this effort but the Audubon chapter considers this volunteer project to be a long-term endeavor.

The Big Woods is a remnant of the Beech Maple Forest that once covered major parts of Ohio, and is threatened by the spread of exotics into this State Nature Preserve, especially on the forest edge and at the head of the extensive trail system.

Garlic mustard spreads naturally but is also spread by innocent visitors who often transport the seed trapped in mud in the soles of their boots.  The project includes installing trailhead signs that give information about invasive plants and boot brushes to prevent seed spread into the Nature Preserve.

On Saturday, April 20 from 10am-3pm, there will be an opportunity for interested area residents to get involved by pulling garlic mustard in the Nature Preserve.  PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED.  Please contact greynolds@amvohio.org for further information.   Volunteers must 16 years or older.

Each spring millions of birds migrate from the tropics back to the temperate region and the boreal forest. This fallout enriches our lives and renews our energy. Whether in the field or at a banding station one cannot help be impressed by the diversity of these erstwhile travelers. How to cope with such a wave of spring returners? Dave will try to bring our ears and eyes back in shape after eight months absence.

Dave Russell is a professor who teaches ornithology at Miami University and runs the Avian Research and Education Institute bird banding station at Hueston Woods State Park. He and his wife Jill also do research on Boreal Owls in the summer while teaching in Alaska. They have also developed a fascination for Peony’s and Peony farming in Alaska.

NOTE: The date of this outing, originally set for Saturday, has been changed to Sunday, April 14 due to a scheduling conflict.

This will be another delightful visit to the rural Indiana property of our hosts, Kathy Hunter and Ron Huffmeier. The land, located just to the west of Brookville Lake, features stunning old-growth forest along with open grassy areas and lovely streams. We are sure to find a nice variety of birds while walking through this attractive setting. Pack a lunch, and we will dine on the deck of Kathy and Ron’s home overlooking the woods. We will leave Oxford from the new WalMart parking lot (on US 27 / College Corner Pike, north of town) at 7:00 a.m. and return to Oxford after lunch.

Botanist David Brandenburg has traveled circuitous routes across North America –– either by himself or with kindred spirits –– looking for fascinating plants. He sometimes finds these species with advance knowledge of their general locations;, other times by serendipity. He will spend an evening with  Audubon Miami Valley reliving some of the highlights from these botanical adventures, where most days ended in a pup tent on the side of the road or in $20-a-night lodgings. His decades of field work throughout North America culminated in the 2010 publication of National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Wildflowers of North America, which he will sign during his visit.

Brandenburg, taxonomic botanist at the Dawes Arboretum, worked as a field botanist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and served as curator of the herbarium at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York. Brandenburg lectures, leads hikes, and conducts hands-on workshops on cultivated plants, trees, shrubs, grasses, sedges, aquatic and wetland species, wood anatomy, and other topics. He has a lifelong passion for economic botany: how plants are used as foods and flavorings, medicines, perfumes, cosmetics, textiles, dyes, and construction materials.

Saturday –March 9, 2013
12:00 noon – 4:00 pm
Alumni Hall Rotunda, Miami U, Oxford

Awards Ceremony: 2:00 pm, Room 322, McGuffey Hall, Miami U

Followed by special guest Chris Rowlands, Environmental Education Specialist, Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm