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| Change is a part of life As the year changes and millennium so too
must our club. The big shoes of our past two presidents will be hard to
fill and their experience will be drawn upon for us to succeed. Robert
and Joe both deserve our respect for a job well done. As your new president
I hope to encourage more members to become active in birding. As I get
deeper and deeper into birding I realize how little I do know and that
challenge makes my excitement of birding grow. Each time out I am spiritually
and psychologically reawakened and get excited over a common bird as a
rare one. Listing and seeing new birds should not be our sole reason for
birding. One should improve upon birding skills by learning new field marks
and sounds. To this end I encourage all local birders to join our Golden
Triangle Audubon Society (GTAS) as well as the Texas Ornithological Society
(TOS) and the American Birding Association (ABA). Few of our members belong
to one and even fewer belong to two and a sparse minority belong to all
three. GTAS supports local bird habitats and with field trips promotes
"hands on" birding and skill improvements. TOS and ABA on a broader scale
do likewise. Both have excellent publications with in depth articles on
birding. TOS 's recent articles on the Black-headed Gull and Nelson's Sharp-tailed
Sparrow will improve anyone's field skills. ABA's recent article on
the recent Solitary Vireo complex split helps our understanding of
how to tell them apart and shows us there may be birds around that we did
not know of because we did not look. Becoming a better student in bird
identification and honing one's skills, the "usual" may turn out to be
the unusual.
Ken Sztraky
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The Golden Triangle Audubon Society is a certified chapter of the National Audubon Society. As such, all NAS members living in the chapter territory, which comprises Jefferson, Orange and Hardin counties and a few additional adjacent communities, are automatically members of the chapter. We receive a modest dues share from NAS for such members. If you are not already a member of Audubon, you may become one by completing the membership form on the back page and sending it along with a check for $20 to us. For this you will receive Audubon magazine and this Newsletter. If you live outside our territory, but would like to receive this Newsletter on a regular basis, we ask for a subscription of $15. In fact, even for those living in our territory, our dues share from NAS barely covers our Newsletter costs, and we ask those who are able to contribute $15 a year as a donation so that we can continue and expand our programs. Many of you receiving this issue visited our booth at the Home and Garden Show and expressed an interest in our activities. This, however, will likely be the only issue we are able to send you unless you request that we continue. |