. . . And Thanks For All The Birds!

We thank everyone who supported the Tucson Bird & Wildlife Festival this year! What a success it was with an estimated 1120 attendees from 24 states and four countries. We saw many faces with many smiles, people learning and forging new friendships. The event was buzzing with positive energy beginning with Nightlife kick-off with our Birding Cup winners, to Optics Day on Friday, sold out field trips over three days, advocacy stations, workshops, well-attended free talks, kids' activities and sold out keynote dinners.

The photograph shows Congressman Raul Grijalva receiving the North American Migratory Bird Joint Venture Conservation Champion Award from Dr Paul Green (right, Executive Director of Tucson Audubon and Management Board Member of the Sonoran Joint Venture) and Robert Mesta, (left, Coordinator of the Sonoran Joint Venture), and keynote speaker for Friday's event. 

Our Nature Expo offered visitors an interactive experience with the Tucson Audubon Nature Shop, fantastic vendors and live birds and animals. Even local young birders had a chance to get in the action finding 34 species on their birding trip. We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from so many, including vendors, sponsors, attendees and the public. The planning for next year's festival is already under way.

A big thank you to our core of 61 volunteers who were the face of Tucson Audubon. Thank you to our sponsors, our field trip leaders, talk and workshop presenters and Tucson Audubon staff and board members. Everyone came together to create an event to remember!

165/$16,200/$8,800 to go!

You are one of around 3000 people who receive this email. You may be one of the 165 people who, in the last six weeks, has made a cash gift to Tucson Audubon. We are raising funds to help make Tucson more bird friendly.

If you are one of those 165 supporters, thank you for raising more than $16,200.

Last Chance to Sign Up for Warblers

Sign up today for Homer Hansen’s Warbler workshop THIS THURSDAY! One classroom session and an all-day field trip to gain identification skills and observe these groups of elusive birds. Image by Jim Burns.

Larry's Leisurely First Friday Sonoita Creek Bird Stroll

Join Larry Morgan, Caretaker of Paton Center for Hummingbirds, for a leisurely bird hike in the Nature Conservancy's Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve. It's a great time of year to see Western Yellow-billed Cuckoos (Image by Steve Baranoff) along the creek, which has just been designated critical habitat for this species by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

• Friday, Sept. 5 | 8:00–10:00am

No registration required, but you will need to pay the preserve entry fee.

 

Seven Saturdays in Patagonia—Hike, Learn, Eat | October 4

Hike Corral Canyon with Bryon Lichtenhan in search of Gray Hawks, Azure Bluebirds, and other local specialties. 7:30 to 10:00am. You must register online. Sign up here.

Learn. Attend the first presentation of our Relaxed Lecture Series. 11:00–11:45am Jonathan Horst, Restoration Ecologist, will be presenting on the Science of Nest Boxes and will introduce Tucson Audubon's vision for "Win-Win for Azure Bluebirds and Arizona Vineyards" nest box project.

Eat. Picnic and Bluebird Box Assembly 12:00–2:00pm. Grab your lunch in town to support the local birding economy and help us assemble the first few nest boxes for our "Azure Bluebirds and Arizona Vineyards" project.

 

Pardon our Planning

We're working our rejuvenation of the Paton place in many ways.  The current stakes and orange tape are marking out potential spots for parking and interpretive signage. Our signage project will help people understand connections between the birds we love, the lives we live, and the local watershed and mountains.

If you'd like to support the development of the sign content and the creation of our kiosk, please give generously to this project here.

 

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Birds & Beer This Thursday August 21st 5–7 pm

Join us for Birds & Beer this Thursday! Festival volunteers, you are invited celebrate a successful event and share your festival experience while enjoying free free pizza. We hope to see you there! For more details, please contact Julie at jpulliam@tucsonaudubon.org or 520-209-1811.

Vote for Conservation in the Primaries!

Hummingbirds All Around

Attract local hummingbirds to your yard with the Best1 Hummingbird Feeder. This feeder is bee proof, has 8 feeding stations, rust resistant and has a built in perch. Choose from a 32oz glass bottle or 8oz glass bottle.
 
Familiarize yourself with the hummingbirds in your yard with the first ever, comprehensive photographic guide to the identification of all 24 species of hummingbirds to be seen as breeders or vagrants in North America. Hummingbirds of North America the Photographic Guide by Steven Howell, contains up to 14 full-color photos for each species, with detailed photo captions, along with detailed introduction covers fundamentals of hummingbird identification, including discussions of anatomy, plumage variation, and molt.

OPTICS

Vortex Viper 8x42
This sounds too good to be true. Vortex takes its already award-winning Viper binocular and adds High Density (HD) extra-low dispersion glass. With these high-performance additions to the already bright, rugged, lightweight, and affordable binocular, you win big when you take the Viper HD into the field or forest. Vortex's XP engineering anchors internal prisms in place and improves the Viper's ability to withstand rough use. Protected with rubber armoring, waterproofing, fogproofing, and backed by the Vortex VIP warranty, the Viper HD is certain to perform for generations.
Member Price $587.69, Regular Price $652.99

Tucson Audubon's Nature Shops are the best place in our region to try and buy binoculars. Check out our prices and you can see why. Come in and see us for the top brands.

 Need directions to our Nature Shops? Find all the info here.

Conservation News

Biologist’s opinion on the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine’s potential to harm endangered jaguars overruled by Supervisor Spangle
The Arizona Daily Star reports that biologists who warned of harm from the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains were overruled. “U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists in Tucson warned more than a year ago that the proposed Rosemont Mine could kill or harm the nation’s only known wild jaguar, federal records show. They also said the mine would illegally destroy or modify the endangered cat’s critical habitat, records show. But those conclusions, contained in three preliminary drafts of a key biological opinion on the mine, were changed in the final draft. The earlier drafts regarding the mine’s impact on jaguar habitat were written by lower-level staff biologists during the spring of 2013. The final draft, changed by the biologists’ supervisor in Phoenix, was sent to the Forest Service in July 2013. A final biological opinion was published in October. The wildlife service supervisor, Steve Spangle, vetoed several findings and recommendations from his staff’s early drafts.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposes critical habitat for the imperiled Western yellow-billed cuckoo, but questions remain if it will be sufficient to prevent the species’ further decline
The Public News Service reports that “The federal government is moving to protect hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in Arizona and several other western states that the yellow-billed cuckoo bird calls home. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to designate over 500,000 acres as critical habitat for the cuckoo, which is also being considered for endangered species designation.”

The American Bird Conservancy’s press release on the proposed designation was not very upbeat, however.  ABC’s Senior Policy Advisory, Steve Holmer said, “The draft rule only proposes to list the species as threatened rather than as endangered, and doesn’t address the threats or propose more effective conservation measures such as removing cattle from riparian areas and restricting the use of pesticides in adjacent agricultural areas,”

In addition, the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Public Advisory notes that "In the proposal, the Service is considering excluding approximately 193,347 acres from the critical habitat designation because of existing conservation plans for those areas that protect the western yellow-billed cuckoo and its habitat. All proposed critical habitat designations on tribal lands are being considered for exclusion."

Tucson Audubon is reviewing the proposed critical habitat designation for the Western yellow-billed cuckoo and plans to submit detailed comments. Our review will look at lands that are being considered for exclusion, as well as lands in southeast Arizona containing important cuckoo habitat that were not included in the draft proposal that should be considered for inclusion in the final designation.

New solar “power towers” scorch birds in mid-air, causing serious concern for bird conservation
The AP reports that “The Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays — "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version. The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.”