Category Archives: Midwest Birding Symposium

I can’t believe the Midwest Birding Symposium ended nearly three weeks ago. One of the most charming things about the whole weekend was the location. I’d like to share some photos of Lakeside, Ohio, where the symposium took place.

Lakeside was founded as a private community in late August, 1873. Today Lakeside is an Independent Chautauqua, which is a sort of church-affiliated vacation resort. The season of the “Chautauqua on Lake Erie,” which normally runs 11 weeks, includes evening entertainment, educational seminars, and recreational activities for the whole family. The whole thing takes place in a most charming gated village full of well-preserved, historic buildings. The symposium occured about a week after the regular summer season.

The Lakeside Dock juts out into Lake Erie from the Pavilion. Close to here is Central Park, where the first meetings at Lakeside took place back in 1873. Today the park holds a playground, bandstand and even miniature golf. Along the lakeside at Lakeside, a small sitting area among shade trees and benches provided the idea circle for the symposium’s Big Sit.

The venues at Lakeside, typically used for the Chautauqua’s programs and seminars, were ideal for the symposium’s line-up of speakers, as well as the weekend’s Bird Watcher’s Market and Artist Gallery. The 3000 seat Hoover Auditorium served as the main venue for symposium information as well as the keynote speakers.

The streets of Lakeside are lined by historic old cottages and were busy with not only cars but plenty of golf carts, which acted as shuttles between the venues. The cinema and several restaurants, coffee shops and souvenir stores are located in the small downtown area.

Lakeside has several lodging options; symposium attendees took over both Hotel Lakeside and the Fountain Inn early so we elected to rent one of the many cottages available for hire. It was great to be able to walk from our base to the venues throughout the day. Our cottage was probably suitable for nine or more people to share. The upstairs was a small maze of adjoining bedrooms and the large living areas had couches and chairs aplenty. Between the large kitchen and main living area there were two dining tables. The cute screened-in porch was also full of rocking chairs and benches, and I can image sitting there on a warm summer night must be very cozy indeed.

We enjoyed our brief time in Lakeside and look forward to attending the 2011 symposium there!

Several shots of birder-themed license plates were shown during the great slide show put together by Jeffrey Gordon on the last day of the Midwest Birding Symposium. I managed to capture a few photos of these myself.

I started a Flickr group for bird- or birder-themed license plates. Do you have any photos you can add to the pool? Have you ever seen one of the plates featured in the group? Do you have a birdy license plate yourself (maybe in one of the above photos)? I’d love to hear about it!

A symposium is defined as a meeting or conference for discussion of a topic, and so a main part of the Midwest Birding Symposium was the great lineup of speakers. Over Friday and Saturday I attended several keynote speeches as well as four separate, smaller break-out sessions.

Here are just some of the dynamic guest speakers in action.

Alvaro Jaramillo‘s talk was called “Bird ID Outside the Box.” As a new birder I thought this might be too ‘advanced’ for me but the description intrigued me and I’m really glad I attended. The MBS program said of Alvaro’s speech: “This workshop will aim to teach a little bit of birding voodoo and other features to concentrate on while birding.” Part of Alvaro’s thesis is that we should get all we can out of birding, and enjoy the hobby in our own way. If you don’t like listing, for example, don’t do it. You don’t have to be a lister to be a birder. Want to watch the birds in your back yard? You’re a birder, too. He also presented some really neat research being done around brain function, memory and facial recognition and suggested we can apply some of those techniques to learning bird identification. Birding voodoo indeed!

Kenn Kaufman spoke on “Flights Against the Sunset: Why We Need Birds.” He shared lots of reasons why we need birds (yes we do!) along with a fair dose of humor. He even impersonated a Mourning Dove at one point. Don’t believe me? See the video below!

Bill Thompson, III introduced the keynote speakers who appeared at Hoover Auditorium, sometimes in song. He also spoke about the process of creating his book The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America.

David Allen Sibley spoke Friday night about his new book, The Sibley Guide to Trees. He also generously spent two sessions signing books for legions of fans. It was fun to see that many people brought him several books to be signed: a pristine new copy of the tree guide along with a hopelessly tattered copy of The Sibley Guide to Birds or another of his field guides.

Lang Elliott has been recording natural sounds for over 20 years. He shared a great collection of bird calls, songs and hoots during his presentation.

Wayne R. Petersen spoke about inland shorebirds. This was an information-packed talk featuring slides with lots of shorebird ID tips, trivia, photos and data.

Actress Jane Alexander spoke on “Birding On and Off the Movie Set.” She shared a series of amusing anecdotes on the birding adventures she’s had while traveling the world, acting in movies, television shows and stage performances.

Al Batt‘s program was titled “Snippets from a Life Gone to the Birds.” He had an auditorium of birders laughing in the aisles with his tales of growing up in a big family on a farm, birding with children as an adult, squirrel troubles and more. Apparently a bat or two makes its home in the Hoover Auditorium of Lakeside and one made a rather dramatic flight across the top of the stage during Al’s talk. It was two Batts for the price of one.

Jim Berry was the final speaker on Sunday morning, giving a program called “Roger Tory Peterson: Yesterday and Today.” This included two older videos of Peterson which were very interesting.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to take any photos of two other speakers I saw during the MBS. Mike Bergin of 10,000 Birds spoke on bird blogging. He shared 80+ of the best bird blogs (I was very excited to get a shout-out). Author Scott Weidensaul gave a presentation called “Of a Feather: A (Brief) History of American Birding.” This was very entertaining, especially considering I had just read the book.

Finally, here’s a video montage of Bill Thompson III, Kenn Kaufman, Jane Alexander and Al Batt.

Along with several of their resident raptors, the wildlife rehabilitators at Back to the Wild brought along some rescued, permanent resident snakes, turtles and frogs to the Midwest Birding Symposium. There was also a display with Monarch caterpillars, chrysalises and butterflies, representing various stages in the amazing life cycle of the Monarch. Several of the butterflies were tagged, and we learned about the process of monitoring Monarchs as they migrate south.

The neatest thing here was that several of the chrysalises were very dark, meaning the butterflies were nearly ready to emerge. I was very excited to be there to witness a Monarch coming out. I just missed it on the video, but you can see this is a very fresh little butterfly.

Before – just breaking out!

Fresh lady Monarch!
I don’t believe I have ever seen this before, and I was totally amazed. Have you ever seen a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis?

While at the BTTW display, we met a couple from California who asked if we could take their photo by some of the birds. They then returned the favor and captured the only photo of the both of us taken at the Midwest Birding Symposium!

Arthur, a Red-tailed Hawk, and me

If you’ve read other blogs from attendees of the Midwest Birding Symposium, you already know that a Kirtland’s Warbler was spotted at East Harbor State Park on Friday, and ended up being seen by a good many of the attendees. This was a life bird for many, and it would have been for us, too, if we hadn’t missed it. If you’re not sure why this was such a spectacular sighting, read Laura’s blog post here.

When Bill Thompson came to the stage after Jim McCormac’s talk, Birding Ohio’s Lake Erie Shore, he barely got out the words “There’s a Kirtland’s Warbler at East Harbor State Park” before people started trotting out to their cars. We hesitated, and then I fumbled when writing down directions which Bill kindly repeated a couple of times. I didn’t have to worry about finding the park though – there was a steady stream of traffic flowing from Lakeside to East Harbor. Where else was there to go, after that announcement?

“Follow trail to next marker for last sighting of Kirtland’s Warbler”>

We followed the signs to a clump of about 20 birders clogging the trail. When we arrived, we learned that the bird had not been seen for the last 10 or so minutes. I overheard someone talking on the phone. He said that he was standing with “150 or so of my birding friends.”

I thought this was a funny bit of hyperbole, but didn’t think much about it until we walked further down the trail a few minutes later. Ah, there was everyone. There were groups of birders everywhere I turned. Far down the path, off the path in the bushes to the left, off the path under the trees to the right. I had thought 150 was an exaggeration, but it may have actually been conservative.

We searched for about 40 minutes before heading back to Lakeside to have lunch. During the afternoon’s first program, Arthur learned that the warbler had been seen once more. Again, foolishly, we hesitated, and again we arrived just minutes after the last sighting of the bird. All was not lost though, as this proved to be the one time I got to meet, extremely briefly, both Sharon (aka Birdchick) and John (aka Born Again Birdwatcher).

Checking the warbler’s favorite tree Saturday morning

We tried again for the Kirtland’s Warbler first thing Saturday morning, but the bird was not seen again after Friday afternoon, so that was our strike three. But the chase is part of the fun, and I don’t regret a moment of our search. We’ll see a Kirtland’s, some day.

Arby, Arthur and I hit the road for the Midwest Birding Symposium Thursday morning at 7:40am – a bit later than we aimed. When Arby reminded us ten minutes down the road that we forgot a few of his essentials, we had to turn back. Finally we were on our way for real at 8am, hairbrush and imported hairball remedy safely in Arby’s luggage.

After we dropped Arby off at camp (my parent’s house) we headed east towards Lakeside, Ohio. Lakeside is a six hour drive from our house, according to Google maps and our trusty TomTom GPS navigator. We meant to allow extra time for pitstops, but when we stopped for lunch at 12:20pm we realized it was 1:20pm and we lost an unplanned hour with the timezone change. A brief panic ensued but we were making good time and there was nothing to do but press on.

Lucky for us both Google and TomTom underestimated the maximum allowable speed for the final miles of the journey, so our last hour took only 15 minutes and we made it to Lakeside with time to spare. We picked up the key to our cottage at 409 Maple, fetched our registration packet, and even had time to walk out of the Lakeside grounds to pick up a half gallon of milk. We arrived at Lakeside’s dock to catch the Goodtime I for a two hour cruise on Lake Erie.

The Goodtime I approaches the dock at Lakeside

Birders boarding the boat

A Goodtime was had by all. Especially the Ring-billed Gulls.

More MBS to come…