Third Annual Ohio Young Birders Conference
Meet Our Team
NEWS & UPDATES
Stay up-to-date with new tours, special offers and exciting news. We'll also share some hints and tips for travel, photography and birding. We will NEVER share nor sell your information!
Nov 17, 2009 | by Kevin Loughlin
The Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge offered their building to host the Third Annual Ohio Young Birders Conference. The room was large, but barely large enough to house the approximately 100 attendees!
Doors opened at 8:30am for registration. Each attendee was given a ticket for the afternoon raffle, and there were also optional raffles offered for purchase to get a chance to win one of two Vortex spotting scopes donated to the Ohio Young Birders Club (OYBC) by Eagle Optics. After registering, there was a wall of photos of 10 tough bird IDs for an additional afternoon contest created and emceed by Kenn Kaufman.
Kim Kaufman, director of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) and the visionary behind the OYBC, kicked off the day’s events thanking all the attendees and introducing a few people, like myself, for their work with kids in other states.
She then turned the job of emcee over to Elliot Miller (age 14), who did an excellent job of introducing the speakers and moving things along.
Our first speaker, Sarah Winnicki (age 16) who offered a humorous, yet informative program on California Condors. She did a great job in covering the Condor’s natural history as well as the history of their near demise and continuing recovery. She is certainly passionate about these ungainly, yet majestic birds!
Next to take the podium was Lukas Padegimas (age 16). Lukas was enthusiastic as he described the “little puff of feathers” that were the Piping Plovers he and his family went to Henlopen, DE to find. He regaled us with tales of their adventures (and misadventures) and all the other birds and wildlife they found along the Delaware Bay.
Malkolm Boothroyd (age 17) was our keynote speaker. Malkolm is from Whitehorse, Yukon, Cananda where he lives with his family. In 2008 Malkolm and his family pedaled their way from Whitehorse, down the Pacific Coast through California and across the souther states to the panhandle of Florida… and back home again! After 13,000+ miles by bicycle, they had found 549 species of birds and helped raise $25,000 for bird conservation. Not bad for a Big Year, but especially using no fossil fuels! You can visit Malkolm’s trip blog at: http://birdyear.blogspot.com/
After a fine lunch prepared by volunteers we continued the day with Kenn’s Bird ID contest and the raffles for many great prizes donated by many different organizations (including Wildside).
To end the day, everyone piled into vehicles to carpool/caravan around the “behind the scenes” roads of the Ottawa NWR. Activity was a bit slow but we saw some good birds, including a beautiful adult Bald Eagle souring directly overhead.
Several stops along the way offered good scope views of waterfowl like Gadwall and Trumpeter Swan as well as a few more eagles. A Red-tailed Hawk flew low overhead as we watched a pair of Northern Harriers swooping over the grassy marsh. Nearing the end of our tour, a flock of Snow Buntings landed in the road just ahead of the cars and offered great looks!
A huge THANK YOU must go out to not only our young presenters, but also to all those who made this great event possible. Kim and her team of BSBO employees and volunteers, once again, did a stupendous job in pulling off the Third Annual Young Birders Conference!
photos and text © Kevin Loughlin
2 Comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Kevin: It looks and sounds like you had quite the time there…. What a wonderful, inspirational, motivated group of youthful leaders you saw… We will make it…eventually! Thanks for your report!!
Elise
Kevin, It was great to see you again and share the excitement of our big weekend with you. Looking forward to seeing you in May!
~kimmer