DECEMBER 1998

NEXT MEETING: This month Margaret Rubega will present the program, called "The Phalarope Thing." The meeting will be at the Unitarian Meeting House on Spring Hill Road. There will be refreshments, provided by Bob Pirrie, at 7 pm and the meeting will begin at 7:30. Margaret is the newly appointed State Ornithologist and is teaching in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UConn.

The January meeting will be the second Friday, January 8, since the first Friday is New Year's Day. Sam Freid will speak on the birds of Belize.

HOME PAGE: Steve has been working hard at getting the NOS home page up and running. If you want to take a look at it, this is the address:

https://members.tripod.com/~NOS98/nos.html

At this point, he has a brief history of NOS, a skeleton schedule of upcoming events, archived and current newsletters, directions to the meeting and some of the Christmas Bird Count data. More to come/ Any suggestions? What would you like to see here?

FIELD TRIPS: There are no official field trips scheduled for December because of the holidays and the Christmas counts. Larry is working on plans for an eagle watching trip along the Connecticut River in January and NOS will co-sponsor a trip with the Conservation Center at Goodwin Forest to Sachuest and the Rhode Island shore in February. Further details will be in subsequent newsletters.

Steve Rogers (429-1259) is the compiler for the Storrs Count which will be held on December 19 . The Edwin Way Teale Trailwood Count will be on Sunday December 27. Sam Higgins (455-0063) is the compiler for this count. If anyone is interested in volunteering for either, or both, of these counts please call and make arrangements. There is a need for area captains for the Trailwood count especially, but if you just want to join another group going out that is fine also. Also, if your home is not more than 7.5 miles from the Storrs Congregational Church and you feed the birds, you can participate as a feeder watcher. Contact Steve to learn the details about how to do that.

There will be a meeting to compile the data at Sam Higgins' home on Hammond Hill in Hampton after dark, about 4:30 on the day of the Trailwood count.

Since the Storrs count is on a Saturday, in hunting season; it might be wise to consider wearing some blaze orange when out and about. The Trailwood count will be on a Sunday because of the amount of hunting we witnessed last year while we were counting. Please be careful.