This was a hybrid meeting, broadcast on Zoom.
Call to Order: Navin Sasikumar
Call to Order: 7:30 PM
Attendees: 10 on Zoom
In person: 15
Martin Dellwo moved to approve minutes of the last meeting and Bert Filemyr seconded the motion. The minutes were approved unanimously.
Committee Reports
Membership – Rebecca Reicherter
No report.
Field Trips – Peter Hamner for Linda Widdop
If you wish to lead a field trip, contact Linda: linda@techimpact.org
Upcoming field trips:
| DATE | TIME | TRIP | LEADER |
| February 7 | 11:30am – 1:00pm | Winter Gulls at Glen Foerd | Holger Pflicke |
| March 7 | 7:300am – 6:00pm | Winter Gulls at Glen Foerd | Holger Pflicke |
Navin Sasikumar announced the results of the Panama trip with Tanya Burnett. The trip was fun and full of new birds! Navin tallied 194 total birds in just over 2 days.
Conservation – Perri Strawn
Robert Karchnyak is meeting with the City Council to discuss Philadelphia becoming a Bird Town.
Philadelphia 2050 is coming up and asking people that live in the city to advocate on behalf of birds to make the city bird safe.
Billings – Art McMorris
Go Birding!
Hand in checklists for 2025 or send your number to Art.
Cassinia – Holger Pflicke
No report.
Announcements
Patrick McGill noted that Peter Kurtz had 29 birders and 87 species for the Pennypack Valley Christmas Bird Count. A new bird for the CBC was the Black-Headed Gull.
Holger Pflicke reported about 108 species for the Mid-Winter Census. Black-Headed Gull, Glaucous Gull, Brown Thrasher, and Painted Bunting were the highlights.
Programs – Patrick McGill
February 5th meeting will be a hybrid meeting, Robert Driver will be giving a talk on the evolution and functional characterization of olfactory receptors in birds
Evening Program
Sabrina Greening (in-person) – The Eastern Songbird Morbidity/Mortality Event of Summer 2021: Summary of Findings
Sabrina Greening (she/her) is a Senior Research Investigator with the Wildlife Futures Program, University of Pennsylvania. She discussed the reports of sick, dying, and dead birds exhibiting neurological behaviors with eye swelling and crusty discharge, in May 2021 in Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The majority of reports involved fledgling Common Grackles, Blue Jays, European Starlings, and American Robins. Despite the exhaustive collective effort of the laboratories, no definitive cause(s) of illness or death have been determined at this time. However, the labs have collectively been able to rule out important diseases and pathogens, including salmonellosis, chlamydiosis, avian influenza, West Nile virus, coronaviruses, Newcastle disease, herpesviruses, poxviruses, and Trichomonas parasites.
Brock Geary (in-person) – Investigating persistent impacts of West Nile virus on Pennsylvania birds
Brock Geary is from Lafayette, Louisiana, and received his PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Tulane University in 2018. He gave a presentation on research that uses Pennsylvania’s mosquito surveillance database to model the occurrence of West Nile Virus over space and time in the state. By linking this information to Breeding Bird Survey records, researchers are able to assess how local and annual environmental changes relate to trends in abundances of over 150 bird species.
Gallery
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 9:15 PM.