Midwest Birding Symposium 2013 Recap: Part 2

This is the second half of my 2013 Midwest Birding Symposium recap.

 

Some additional images and memories from the four days of birding, symposiating, and socializing at the 2013 Midwest Birding Symposium. There were welcoming signs everywhere for attendees. 

The main entrance to the Lakeside Chautauqua.

Many of the Lakeside businesses, like the Ohh La La Cafe, stayed open just for the MBS.

It was great to see old friends and to meet new ones. The MBS is a great gathering point for that.

Carlos Bethancourt from Canopy Tower Panama and Elsa Thompson, founding publisher of Bird Watcher's Digest.

Greg (left) and Tim outside the Birder's Marketplace.

Greg Miller of "The Big Year" fame, meeting Tim Appleton, co-founder of The British BirdFair, the world's largest birding event. The MBS is one of those events where you have an opportunity to meet people you know from social media or from their affiliations and accomplishments. In that way it's a lot like a birding family reunion.

The speakers during the MBS were talented, engaging, and fascinating. Twenty different presenters spoke on things as varied as gull ID, moth watching, pelagic trips, nature journaling, birding in the digital age, and phone-scoping!

MBS attendees during a morning keynote program in Hoover Auditorium.

We had an army of volunteers helping us with the MBS. More than 100 Lakesiders volunteered to help and about another 50 kind souls from the birding community stepped in to do everything from stuffing attendee bags to guiding bird walks to driving golf-cart shuttles and helping to direct lost attendees to their proper destination.

Lakeside volunteers at our pre-MBS luncheon.

Four of the gals on the Bird Watcher's Digest staff, from left: Michelle, Laura, Wendy, and Ann at the MBS closing ceremonies.

In 2011, the MBS attendees in Hoover Auditorium on Saturday night set a world record (recognized by The Guinness Book of World Records) for the most people doing a simultaneous bird call. We hooted out the call of a barred owl. This year we participated in The International Day of Peace by having a giant group Peace Hug.

Everybody enjoying a #peacehug and flashing the peace sign for The International Day of Peace.

The American Birding Association, Lake Erie WingWatch, Columbus Audubon, and The Ohio Young Birders Club helped us make Young Birders' Day at MBS eventful and enjoyable. Despite the icky weather, the birding was really good. So was the pizza.

Five designated birding locales were selected as "official" MBS birding sites and volunteer guides were there at each site just after dawn to lead small groups of birders. Lots of great birds were found, including two species of phalarope, red knot, merlin, and golden-winged warbler.

On Sunday morning we held the Roadrunner 3K Fun Run and about 20 brave souls did not let the cold temperatures and howling Lake Erie wind deter their desire to run. We even had the Blue Goose from Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in the run. He (she? it?) finished surprising well despite never once taking to the air.

A very special thank you to our Ohio birding pal Ernie Cornelius for taking many of the images you've enjoyed here and on the MBS site. Ernie also coordinated getting images from a half-dozen other photographers and the he prepared a slide show which we projected on the giant screens each night in Hoover Auditorium. Thanks Ernie!

MBS Official Photographer Ernie Cornelius

And then it was Sunday afternoon and time for everyone to head home. It was another successful Midwest Birding Symposium and we owe that to all the support from our sponsors, co-hosts, volunteers, speakers, vendors, staff, and friends.

The next Midwest Birding Symposium will be held in Bay City, Michigan, on September 10–13, 2015. If you'd like to get your name and contact info on the pre-registration list, you can do so at www.midwestbirding.org.

Bird Watcher's Digest is starting an exciting new series of birding events.

In February of 2014 we'll be hosting our first-ever Reader Rendezvous in Minnesota where we'll go birding with funnyman Al Batt. Follow this link for details.

And in early April we'll be back at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center in Columbus, Ohio for the second annual Birding Optics & Gear Expo. This sales-oriented event gives you a chance to "try-before-you-buy" choosing from among hundreds of optics and gear products for birders. 

Don't miss it!

We'll see you out there with the birds!

Birds & People at MBS 2011

I want to share some images with you from the 2011 Midwest Birding Symposium held September 15 to 18 at Lakeside, Ohio. If you were there, you know we had a really great time. If you weren't there, I hope these images will give you some idea of what the MBS is all about. I'll be posting about the MBS a few times in the coming weeks, but for this initial post, let's just take a gander at some of the birds and people. The image above is a male American redstart. The symposium was held at the peak of fall warbler migration along the Lake Erie shore.

Hoover Auditorium was filled with MBS attendees for both morning and evening keynote presentations by folks like Al Batt, Bridget Stutchbury, Peter Dunne, Julie Zickefoose, Kenn and Kim Kaufman, and Greg Miller (one of the three real characters from the book The Big Year). During the MBS, Hoover Auditorium was sponsored by SWAROVSKI OPTIK.

These are our friends Hugo, Irene, and Rafael from the Guatemala-based tour company Operador Latino. They were displaying their tours and materials in a booth in the Birder's Marketplace in South Auditorium. We had more than 60 vendors this year!

Avid Ohio birder/naturalist Sandy Brown keeps her birdmobile loaded with all the gear she needs to enjoy the natural world. Her license plate says it all.

Out at the six MBS designated birding sites, we had volunteer guides stationed, ready to take people out for some bird watching. All guides sported the official MBS guides' trucker hat: black with the MBS Caspian tern stitched on the front panel.

Over at Magee Marsh, many MBS attendees enjoyed looking at the trumpeter swan families. These birds are part of a reintroduction program that is aimed at restoring a viable population of these elegant birds to Ohio.

In South Auditorium on Saturday afternoon lots of bird book authors lined up to sign copies of their books. Shown here from right to left are: Mark Garland, Marie Read, Julie Zickefoose, Connie Toops, and Jeff Gordon.

Another fall migrant, a magnolia warbler. This beauty was photographed at Meadowbrook Marsh and official MBS birding site on the Marblehead Peninsula.

Bird sound expert and Zen master Michael O'Brien lead a walk to the Lakeside pier to listen for the sounds of migrant birds overhead. This was a nice add-on to his MBS talk "Things That Go Seet in the Night."

Super volunteers Marc Nolls and Mike and Karen Edgington helped to organize and run the MBS bird checklist as well as the conservation raffle. Thanks to their efforts, the generosity of our sponsors and donors, and the avid participation of our attendees, the 2011 MBS conservation raffle raised more than $11,000 for bird conservation causes. The Ohio Ornithological Society agreed to match up to $10,000, so our MBS conservation fund total was $21,000! I'm extremely proud of this.

Among the incredibly hard-working MBS staff were, from left to right: volunteer Sheryl Young, Jim Cirigliano, managing editor of Bird Watcher's Digest, and Ann Kerenyi, BWD controller and goddess of ossumness in charge of details for the MBS.

Guides from MBS sponsor Field Guides Birding Tours lead groups of MBS attendees at Magee Marsh. A total of 137 bird species were seen during the 2011 MBS, including a fly-by red-necked phalarope spotted by Cameron Cox at the Leica Lake Watch on the Lakeside pavilion.

My gratitude to the following photographers who took the images above during the 2011 MBS: Ernie Cornelius, Ann Oliver, Liz McQuaid, Sherrie Duris, Micki Hendrick, and Sandy Brown.