March 24 Webinar with Tiffany Kersten – Birdie Big Year: Elevating Women Birders

Please join the BBC on the evening of March 24 from 7PM to 8:30PM for a members only webinar with Tiffany Kersten, entitled Birdie Big Year: Elevating Women Birders.

DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES THIS WEBINAR HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FROM MARCH 10 TO MARCH 24. IF YOU PREVIOUSLY SIGNED UP, YOUR REGISTRATION AND ZOOM LINK WILL STILL WORK FOR THE MARCH 24 DATE.

Tiffany Kersten didn’t set out to do a Big Year, but after a series of unanticipated and serendipitous events, she suddenly found herself amidst one. As a sexual assault survivor, she spent 2021 traveling to all corners of the Lower 48 States, tallying birds and gifting personal safety alarms to women she met along the way. Her goal was to see 700 species, and to raise awareness of women’s safety in the outdoors. She ended up surpassing her goal and setting a new record, of 726 species. In her presentation, Tiffany will lead us through the fear, empowerment, struggles, and healing that all played vital roles in the personal growth she experienced on this wild adventure.

About the Speaker

Tiffany Kersten is a Wisconsin native. She holds a B.S. in Wildlife Ecology from Northland College, and has spent over a decade as an environmental educator, teaching about bird migration with the Cape May Bird Observatory, monitoring shorebirds on Cape Cod, banding Honeycreepers in Hawaii, and finally landing in South Texas where she worked at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge and then managed the McAllen Nature Center. After completing her Lower 48 States Big Year in 2021, she founded her own company, Nature Ninja Birding Tours. She guides primarily in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, and offers international tours as well.

To Register

To register you must be a BBC member. Please log in to your member account and heard over to the Member Resources page under the MEMBERS menu.

Not a member but want to listen in? Please join us! You will get access to a range of member benefits and support the local birding community.

For More Information

For more information contact info@brooklinebirdclub.org.

Conservation Alert – Andrews Point Public Access in Jeopardy

The ongoing lawsuit by an abutter to eliminate public access to the rocky, coastal portion of a property at 18 Longbranch Ave at Andrew’s Point in Rockport is a conservation issue of considerable interest to the BBC. Birders frequently use this access point to seawatch. 

The lawsuit continues even though the property’s deed clearly states that the public shall have trail access in perpetuity. Last year, BBC Conservation Chairperson John Nelson submitted documents and testimony from the birding community proving a history of public access at this location.

On Friday, February 13th, the abutter’s lawyers, the Attorney General’s office, and Rockport town attorney met to negotiate a settlement. Any agreement limiting access is not in the best interest of the public and should not be accepted by the state.

A compromise here could lead other property owners along the Atlantic Path to make similar demands. We could see effects on public access to the Atlantic Path, elsewhere along Rockport’s coastline, and at other locations in the Commonwealth.

The settlement conference is closed to the public, and all parties have signed an agreement not to disclose the proceedings. If a settlement is reached, the Rockport Select Board must vote to accept it. Their decision will occur in a closed session, with little to no direct public input.

We recommend that concerned members email the Attorney General’s office. Rockport residents and property owners may also want to contact the Select Board and the town administrator. Email addresses are listed below.

Please take action tonight to protect the rights the public has enjoyed for so long, not just for ourselves but for the generations to come.

Contact Information:

Attorney General’s Office: https://www.mass.gov/contact-the-attorney-generals-office

Assistant Attorney Generals Representing the Commonwealth
Kendra.Kinscherf@mass.gov
Joel.Quick@mass.gov

Rockport Town Administrator Mitchell Vieira: TA@rockportma.gov

Rockport Select Board: https://www.rockportma.gov/350/Select-Board

Background Information

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/capeannonline/preserving-public-access-to-andrews-point-rockport-t26898.html

https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/03/23/andrews-point-rockport-public-access-private-elizabeth-fisher/

Calling all BBC members – annual memberships expire December 31st 2025. Renew today for the 2026 calendar year to continue uninterrupted access to member benefits including our blue book mailings, member webinars, and more!

Membership is open to all who are interested in birds and nature.

BBC Submits Comment on Sunday Hunting Proposal

The Brookline Bird Club submitted a comment to MassWildlife opposing a proposal to change state law to allow Sunday hunting.

The Club does not take a position on hunting overall. Our concern is with potential limits placed on the use and enjoyment of open space by those who do not hunt. Our position is that the current rule allowing hunting six days a week should remain in place.

• Read the Brookline Bird Club Letter to MassWildlife
• For information about the proposal
• For Information about MassWildlife public listening sessions.

Comments are due on February 5 at 5PM – you can submit comments here.

For More Information

Please email us at president@brooklinebirdclub.org with any questions.

March 1 Webinar – Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood – A Conversation with Author Adam Nicolson Live from Sussex with Science Journalist Cara Giaimo

On Sunday March 1 at 3PM the Brookline Bird Club is joining with the Boston Birding Festival and Massachusetts Association of Bird Clubs to sponsor a conversation with writer Adam Nicolson, the author of Bird School: A Beginner in the Woods. This webinar is open to all.

To learn the birds, the writer Adam Nicolson built an elevated shed as his own personal school, a man-sized birdhouse he calls an “absorbatory,” not an observatory, sited where and English garden and one-time farm, birds and humans, pasts and presents, blur together at the wild wood edge.  

This is the spongy “rough ground” of Adam Nicolson’s recent book, Bird School: A Beginner In the Wood. The author of acclaimed works on history, landscape, and great literature, Nicolson is also a preeminent naturalist. He is the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award, the W. H. Heinemann Award, and the Ondaatje Prize. His books include The Life Between the Tides and Why Homer Matters.

In his bird school classroom, Nicolson approaches the task of learning the birds with whatever tools he has on hand—philosophy, environmental science, poetry, music, history and more. His inventiveness and delight in discovery contributes to this book’s charm.  But he is also on a mission to be “in the world with as little conceptualization of it as the animals or maybe even the stones.” 

“Every wood is a bird cosmopolis,” Nicolson writes from his classroom. “Every blink of life outside the birdhouse window is a planetary phenomenon.”

Running through Bird School is a worrying undercurrent of nature in crisis—declining species, vanishing habitat, ecological unraveling, a warming climate, and changing ground—and a insistence on engaging these challenges in new ways. Drawing on everything from biblical prophets and Mesopotamian farming practices, to Beethoven and the Merlin app, Nicolson invites readers to imagine a more porous, spongy fabric of being—one that includes birds and humans alike, not “shrink-wrapped” into tidy categories.

How to Register

This webinar is open to all.

To register please visit the Boston Birding Festival website and pick CLICK TO REGISTER:
https://www.bostonbirdingfestival.org/posts/bird-school-a-beginner-in-the-wood/

About the Author

Adam Nicolson, FSA, FSA Scot, FRSL (born 12 September 1957) is an English author who has written about history, landscape, great literature and the sea. He has worked as a journalist and in both radio and television. Between 2005 and 2009, in partnership with the National Trust, Nicolson led a project which transformed the land surrounding his house and garden at Sissinghurst into a productive mixed farm, growing meat, fruit, cereals and vegetables. He his son Tom were among the partners in a project to eradicate invasive predators from the Shiant Isles, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. In March 2018, the islands were declared rat-free.

About the Interviewer

Cara Giaimo is a science journalist who loves writing about our fellow species. You can find her work in the New York Times, Atlas Obscura, WIRED, and elsewhere. Cara lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her most recent book is Leaving the Ocean Was a Mistake: Life Lessons from Sixty Sea Creatures.

About the Boston Birding Festival

The Boston Birding Festival In partnership with environmental, cultural, and community leaders and organizations, the Boston Birding Festival seeks to create transformative experiences of collective awe that strengthen public understanding and appreciation of the natural world and contribute to increased environmental justice, conservation, and sustainability. We do this through the lens of birding.

February 19 Webinar with Matthew Young: The Evening Grosbeak Road to Recovery Project and the Stokes Guide to Finches of the United States and Canada

Please join the BBC on the evening of Thursday, February 17 from 7PM to 8:30PM for a member only webinar with Matthew Young from the Finch Research Network (FiRN). Matthew will talk about both The Evening Grosbeak Road to Recovery Project and The Stokes Guide to Finches of the United States and Canada. (NOTE CORRECTED DATE.)

From backyards to wilderness peaks, finches are some of the most exciting, mysterious, and popular group of songbirds. In The Stokes Guide to Finches of the United States and Canada Lillian Stokes, best-selling author of 35 Stokes guides, and finch expert Matthew Young introduce you to the 43 finches of the United States and Canada from feeder-favorite goldfinches to Red Crossbill tribes, to least known mountain-top Black Rosy-Finches to endangered Hawaiian honeycreepers.

The webinar will also focus on the Evening Grosbeak Road to Recovery Project. With a 92% decline since 1970, Evening Grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus) was cited as the steepest declining landbird in the continental United States and Canada in the Partners in Flight 2016 Landbird Conservation Plan.

About the Speaker

Matthew Young is a co-lead on the Evening Grosbeak Road to Recovery Project in addition to being the Founder and Board President of the Finch Research Network. He worked in the field of social work with special needs populations at the William George Agency for 12+ years and is currently a Wild Bird Products Specialist and Conservation Coordinator for Aspen Song Wild Bird Food. Additionally, Matthew worked at the Cornell Lab across 15 years where he focused on Golden-winged Warblers, Voices of Hawaii’s Birds, Merlin Bird ID, and was project lead on Lab’s first Irruptive Finch Survey in 1999.

Co-author of Stokes Guide to Finches of the United States and Canada, Matthew is widely known as a preeminent authority on finches of North America that has written finch species accounts for breeding bird atlases, Birds of the World accounts, and published several papers on finches and the Red Crossbill vocal complex.

To Register:

To register you must be a BBC member. Please log in to your member account and heard over to the Member Resources page under the MEMBERS menu.

Not a member but want to listen in? Please join! You will get access to a range of member benefits and know you are supporting the local birding community.

2026 Bill Drummond Young Birders Scholarship Application Available

The Brookline Bird Club will again offer two Bill Drummond Young Birder’s Scholarships to nurture interest in bird study and conservation among young birders.

The scholarship covers the full cost of the Coastal Maine Bird Studies for Teens program at National Audubon’s Hog Island camp on June 21-26, 2026. Housing, boat travel, and all meals are included. Recipients are responsible for transportation costs to and from the camp.

Applicants must be New England residents, ages 14-17 as of June 1, 2026, and must submit a written application and two letters of reference. Preference given to BBC members. An applicant may join the club at the time of application. A youth membership for one year costs $10.

All completed applications and references must be received by February 16, 2026. For instructions and the application form, check the BBC website.

February 7 BBC Winter Meeting – Social Hour, Used Book Sale & Norman Smith!

Mark your calendar for Saturday, February 7 at 2PM for the BBC’s annual in-person Winter Meeting featuring a social hour with refreshments, our popular used bird book sale table, and our speaker Norman Smith, Director of the Snowy Owl Project. The Winter Meeting is free and open to all. There is plenty of free parking. Please note that this event will be in person only, with no Zoom link.

We will meet up once again at the John Glenn Middle School in Bedford, MA at 99 McMahon Rd. This year we are trying something new. Our winter meeting will take place during the afternoon to make the event more family friendly and make driving there and back easier on our members. The afternoon includes:

• A social hour with refreshments will precede the meeting from 2PM to 3PM.
• We will again host our popular used book sale table where you can sell your unwanted books about birds, birding, and other natural history topics.
• For the first time we will have a family table with displays and activities of interest to kids.
• Our program, including speaker Norman Smith, will start at 3PM. The program will include presentations about the BBC School Book Fund and by the 2025 winners of the Bill Drummond Young Birder Scholarship to National Audubon’s Hog Island Camp.

The Used Book Sale

Once again we will offer a selection of used books about birds, birding, and other natural history topics for sale. This activity proved very popular last year. Please bring your gently used but unwanted books to donate to the sale table. All proceeds will go to Manomet Conservation Sciences to help support research on the Tawny-Throated Dotterel in Peru. A team of researchers there is in need of optical equipment to support field work on this colorful shorebird.

If you would like to donate books please plan to arrive between 1:30 and 2PM.

The Program

We hope to start our program with presentations by our 2025 Bill Drummond Young Birder Scholarship winners and a few words about the BBC’s School Book & Optics Fund.

Our main speaker will be Norman Smith. Norman is a self-taught naturalist who has worked for the Massachusetts Audubon Society since 1974. He recently retired as Director of Blue Hills Trailside Museum and Norman Smith Environmental Education Center in Milton, Massachusetts where he worked for 50+ years. He continues in a part time role to continue his research on raptors at The Snowy Owl Project and elsewhere. Learn more about Norman’s work with Snowy Owls in this short, award winning video.

Since 1981, Norman Smith has spent countless days and nights, in every imaginable weather condition, observing, capturing, banding and relocating Snowy Owls at Logan International Airport. Data has been collected on roosting, hunting and behavior while on their wintering grounds. Since 2000 satellite transmitters have been attached to owls to learn more about their movements. Find out what has been learned to date, what questions remain and how this project developed to include research on Saw-whet Owls. His mission is to use the information gathered from his research to stimulate a passion in everyone he meets to help us better understand, appreciate and care for this world in which we live.

Optional Registration

As we all know February weather in New England can be an… adventure. Make sure you get up to date info on weather related changes by registering in advance. Registering is completely voluntary and will help both us and you plan for the event. Thanks!

For More Information

Please email us at president@brooklinebirdclub.org with any questions.

Starting the Year Off with the BBC

On January 1 Laura de la Flor and Mark Burns led their our 29th (maybe 30th) Brookline Bird Club New Year’s Day birding trip! I’ll let Laura take it from here…

We started leading this trip on the cusp of the ‘technological boom’ so some of our earliest records are either in notebooks or an old AOL account (remember dial-up modems!). Nonetheless, one of our oldest and dearest birding friends came up to me and said: “You do know this is your 30th year!”… I’m checking our records. 

It was a perfect winter day with snow squalls in the morning, temps that hovered around 23°F, and winds that gusted throughout the PM. We birded Cashman Park, the Merrimack River, Salisbury Beach State Park, and Parker River NWR, and tallied 59 species for the club list. 

Highlights include: 3 Barrow’s Goldeneye and 4 Bald Eagles seen along the river during a snow squall, a Long-eared Owl roosting in cedars, 2 Snowy Owls hunkered down in the marsh among ice and snow chunks, and both a Northern Harrier and Short-eared Owl hunting the marsh beneath a near full moon.

eBird trip report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/457805

As always, I loved spending time with old friends and new. Here’s to a very Happy New Year!

Webinar with Sophie Osborn – Feather Trails: A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds

Please join the BBC on the evening of January 27 from 7PM to 8:30PM for a member only webinar with author Sophie Osborn, entitled Feather Trails: A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds.

Birds are visible, vocal sentinels that alert us to environmental harms through their declining numbers or their failure to thrive. In her book Feather Trails—A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds, Sophie Osborn shares her personal experiences reintroducing endangered Peregrine Falcons, Hawaiian Crows, and California Condors to the wild.

While immersing readers in the triumphs and tribulations of being a wildlife biologist, the author explores the threats that imperiled these birds, and reveals that what harmed them threatens us, too. She will discuss what led to the endangerment of these three captivating species, recount the efforts of biologists to recover their populations, and read a few excerpts from her book that describe what it was like to work with these magnificent birds.

About the Speaker:

Sophie A. H. Osborn is an award-winning environmental writer and wildlife biologist whose work has included the study and conservation of more than a dozen bird species in the Americas. She contributed to reintroduction efforts for several endangered birds and served as the field manager for the California Condor Recovery Program in Arizona for four years.

Her first book, Condors in Canyon Country, won the 2007 National Outdoor Book Award for Nature and the Environment. Reviewers for the American Birding Association (ABA) chose her second book, Feather Trails, as their favorite bird book of 2024. Sophie has written articles for Bird Conservation, BirdWatching, Wyoming Wildlife, and Sojourns magazines.

Her writings are also available on her website and her “Words for Birds” Substack blog. 

To Register:

To register you must be a BBC member. Please log in to your member account and heard over to the Member Resources page under the MEMBERS menu.

Not a member but want to listen in? Please join! You will get access to a range of member benefits and know you are supporting the local birding community.