The first ever Buffalo Bird Festival was wonderful! Interdisciplinary talks and creative work paired with outdoor festival fun full of beautiful creativity and good people. Looking forward to next year!

We had a pair of great woodcock walks at Tifft Nature preserve! We heard at least 8, saw at least 4, and got a great look at 3 American Woodcock. It was great to see some of our favorite families and meet some new families too on beautiful early spring evenings!

We had a wonderful time at Birds on the Niagara 2024! It was great to see so many young birder families at events throughout the weekend and meet some new young birders as well! Save the date for BON 2025, Feb. 14-17 and let us know if you are interested in helping with young birder programming! 

We had a wonderful winter bird count at Reinstein Woods' I Bird NY for Kids program! We saw 20 species with excellent feeder watch, nice slushy walk, and a great new family! Highlights were the Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers showing up on the feeders at the same time to give good looks at the differences in these seemingly similar birds.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S159944157  

We started December with the avian collections and bird trivia at Buffalo Museum of Science and wrapped up the month with Christmas Bird Counts with Buffalo Audubon and Iroquois.  

We had a lovely time appreciating nature through art with Ranger Logan Sauer at Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge. We didn't have a ton of birds outside but we had a ton of fun creating art inside! Logan guided some folks in a beautiful Great Blue Heron sunset silhouette project while others created their own. Lots of new faces learning about young birders and the wildlife refuge!

What a lovely fall evening for a special "Owl Prowl Spooktacular" in partnership with Buffalo Audubon & WNY Land Conservancy! We enjoyed funny/spooky stories and songs, cider, and donuts before trying to call in some owls with Naturalist Tom Kerr! We heard Eastern Screech Owls calling back and ended the evening with a sighting of a Great Horned Owl flying off towards the beautiful full moon!

We had a great time this month meeting new young birders and their families at the Reinstein Woods' Fall Festival! Welcome to the new members who joined from that event - we are glad to have you with us! A highlight was definitely giving field guides to particularly interested individuals who said they did not have a field guide at home - watching the excitement in kiddos eyes as they flipped through their very own first field guide was magical! Please keep field guides (and other gently used birding gear!) coming to our Birding Gear Freecycle (more info below) so that we can keep these experiences happening - data from The Spark Bird Project (www.spark-bird.org) shows that 36% of spark bird stories mention field guides as an important part of their spark bird moment! 

A wonderful first program with our official bookstore - Alice, Ever After Books (https://www.aliceeverafterbooks.com/)! We enjoyed stories of real, mythical, and imaginary birds while trying our hand at making our own! Many thanks to artist Christina Baal (https://www.drawingtenthousandbirds.com/) who was the artist behind the American Birding Association's 2022 Bird of the Year art (https://www.aba.org/product-category/art/). Christina's book, Once Upon A Feather: A Field Guide to Fantastic Birds, was one of the books we enjoyed and were inspired by during the event and she even sent along free gifts for attendees and future events!

It was a beautiful day to lead a Birding 101 program at Graycliff! The highlights were the Bald Eagles and the beautiful Red-headed Woodpeckers! 

Lots of peents but no sightings on a beautiful evening at Tifft Nature Preserve! Thanks to all who came out for this great walk! 

A beautiful spring morning to enjoy a walk at Forest Lawn with Dr. Kyle Horton following his Vaughan Lecture at the Buffalo Museum of Science. Brown Creepers were a particularly abundant sign of spring! 

Weather, health, and the holidays interrupted fall and early winter programming but we made up for it with a great Birds on the Niagara Festival with events at Reinstein and Tifft welcoming new families and enjoying reconnecting with long-time young birder friends! Check out photos at https://photos.app.goo.gl/1TAZBff35G9DZWTs9. 

Our September outing took us to CW Native Plant Farm. We had a nice fall walk exploring the beautiful property then headed to Iroquois NWR to look for fall migrants and found ourselves surrounded by Yellow-rumped Warblers in the trees behind the visitor center! 

We had a great (if very warm) hike with Matt Nusstein from NYS Parks! We saw our NY State Bird (Eastern Bluebird), other great local summer birds including lots of fledgling Bobolinks sounding just like R2D2, and great nature in general from butterflies and dragonflies to trees and chipmunks!

It was wonderful to welcome some new faces and say hello to frequent fliers Nora & Gina and enjoy the beautiful weather for Get Outdoors and Get Together Day at Reinstein Woods! The highlight of our wander (besides the great people and beautiful weather!) were definitely the Green Heron, Great Blue Heron, Kingbird, and Pied-billed Grebes at and around Lily Pond. 

We had a lovely exuberant wander around Camp Allegany at Allegany Nature Pilgrimage! Great to connect with frequent fliers and new friends as we shared in an incredible weekend of birds, bugs, herps, and nature in general on one of the most beautiful weekends wny has to offer. Save the date for next year June 2-4!

The rain didn't keep us down as we explored Western New York Land Conservancy's College Lodge Forest with the amazing Marcus Rosten. Not only did we see and hear some cool birds like the Canada Warbler we spotted and the Black-throated Green Warbler and Ovenbird who were trying to out-sing each other, we also saw salamanders, newts, frogs, toads, millipedes, and lots of cool fungi which Marcus was able to help us learn so much about. 

We had a great evening looking for and finding American Woodcock along with a number of other cool birds and even a beaver! 

Want to learn more? Here are some great resources:

• The Field Guide's Podcast Episode 37 - "Bill and Steve Go Timberdoodlin'": Co-hosted by a WNY YBC parent! Filled with amazing facts and a little PG humor (mostly around the name woodcock which definitely has to bring a giggle!). Every episode of The Field Guides is a gem and a delightful way to learn about nature when you are in the car on your way to nature.

• Terra Project Video, "Favorite Bird Sounds: American Woodcock": Great short video intro to the woodcock. Video is from a really exciting project to get audio recorders and radio receivers distributed broadly in order to help people connect with the nature around them while contributing to what is positioned to be a really exciting community science initiative. Learn more at www.terralistens.com. 

WNY YBC even got a shout out from The Field Guides for this walk in Episode 56 - Let's Get Nuts!

Five families enjoyed a scavenger hunt, a visit with the president of the UB Campus Audubon Chapter Lauren Smith, and a nice walk around Beaver Meadow on a beautiful afternoon!

We had a great small group wander with 4 kiddos and 3 parents. We did some feeder watch then braved to cold and saw a barred owl!