South Mountain Airs
The Newsletter of the South Mountain Audubon Society
April – June 2016, Volume XXXVII #2 – The E-mail Edition

UPCOMING BIRD RELATED / OTHER EVENTS

SMAS Annual Luncheon: It’s Not Too Late to sign up for the SMAS Luncheon.
Those receiving this Newsletter should have received earlier emails regarding the SMAS Annual Luncheon with
a sign up / information flyer attachment. That flyer is again provided here as a separate attachment to the email
for this Newsletter edition, or as a separate printed page for those receiving a regular USPS mail version.
The luncheon will be held at our traditional site, the Hickory Bridge Farm Restaurant located in Orrtanna, PA, on
Saturday 23 April; social time at 11:30; meal at 12 Noon.

Upon receipt of this, you should have time to return the sign-up form and make your payment. If it gets too close
to the luncheon date to depend on the regular mail and you want to attend, you can also call the phone number
on the flyer for the Point of Contact, Nancy Locher, to sign up and let us know you want to attend and are
sending the form and payment to us. You may be able to make arrangements to pay at the door. We have to
provide the restaurant a head count to allow the correct number of meals to be prepared and we are then on the
hook to pay.

We will have a program presentation at the luncheon. More details below; sign-up flyer attached to this email.
All are cordially invited to attend.

International Migratory Bird Day

What is International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD)?: IMBD celebrates and brings attention to one of the most important and spectacular events in the Americas - bird migration. IMBD is a Western Hemisphere-wide event and is celebrated in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Held each year on the second Saturday in May, it will be on Saturday May 14 this year, 2016.

This IMBD date is also used for the Pennsylvania Migration Count (the PAMC), Pennsylvania's way of celebrating IMBD. People all over the state count birds and the totals are collected to form a “Snapshot” of the great spectacle of migration across our portion of the Americas. Virtually every county and province in every country carry out some type of celebratory event, festival, or other undertaking on this day.

No matter where you are on this day you can find an IMBD event taking place. Just go to your internet browser and type in International Bird Day (optionally add 2016 to limit the search to current time) and you can find myriad goingson across the country and beyond. For more information on IMBD, the url for the IMBD Home Page is: http://www.birdday.org/

BUT, you can join us right here in the Gettysburg area. The South Mountain Audubon Society (SMAS) counts
our local birds right here adjacent to downtown Gettysburg on the Spangler Spring portion of the Gettysburg
National Battlefield and elsewhere across the region. See details below under field trips.

Earth Day

Earth Day is April 22, this year, 2016. Founded in 1970 as a day of education about environmental issues, Earth
Day is now a globally celebrated holiday that is sometimes extended into Earth Week, a full seven days of events
focused on green awareness. The brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson and inspired by the antiwar protests of
the late 1960s, Earth Day was originally aimed at creating a mass environmental movement. It began as a
"national teach-in on the environment" and was held on April 22 to maximize the number of students that could
be reached on university campuses. By raising public awareness of air and water pollution, Nelson hoped to
bring environmental causes into the national spotlight. Earth day has continued to grow and is now recognized
and participated in around the planet.

Please become more attuned to this area and its related issues. Just go to your internet browser and type in Earth
Day and surf some of the wealth of available information.

UPCOMING PROGRAMS & PRESENTATIONS

Unless indicated otherwise, all SMAS Programs are held at the Adams County Agricultural Resource Center,
670 Old Harrisburg Road, Gettysburg, PA: Social Time at 7:00 PM; meeting and presentaion program at 7:30
PM. A room number for the SMAS meeting will be posted on the front lobby entry inner door.
We've posted the information on our total activities' schedule throughout the year at the end of this edition.

UPCOMING SMAS MONTHLY PROGRAMS

Saturday April 23 th - SMAS Annual Luncheon, 2016
We do not have April Program meetings as we hold our annual SMAS club luncheon in April. It is held on a
Saturday afternoon, not a Monday evening. Social time 11:30 AM; meal and program 12 Noon. See general info
on the luncheon above and on an attached or embedded flyer.

Monday May 16 th - “Herpetology Program for Kids” - Kelsey Frey
Kelsey Frey, a naturalist from Nixon Park in York County, will present a herpetology program where she
will share many scaly and slimy friends including lizards, snakes, "Speedy" the tortoise, salamanders and frogs!
Meet these critters from around the world up close and personal and learn what makes them so special and
unique.
This program is free and geared toward children, but will be informative and interesting to adults as well. All
children must be accompanied by an adult. The program begins at 7:00 PM and will last for about 1 hour.

Monday June 20th - "Stream Study: Who Lives in a Freshwater Stream?"
Mary Ronan, a York County Parks naturalist and avid fly fisher, will share information on the many small
inhabitants of a freshwater stream in Pennsylvania. She will bring live specimens for observation and explain the
life cycles and habitats of many small animals that call this environment their home.

UPCOMING SMAS FIELD TRIPS

Contact Mike O'Brien, Field Trip Chair, as necessary for more information on all Field Trips, the annual
Christmas Bird Count and the Spring Migration Count: 717.642.6676 Res / maddogobrien@gmail.com E-mail.
Please let the Leader know in advance if you plan to attend any field trip, especially if you plan to go direct.
Trips are subject to weathering out, especially in the colder months, or otherwise being changed. In addition, if
we have only one or two known attendees, we may cancel or reschedule a given field trip. We cannot alert you
unless we hear from you.

Saturday May 14th - Spangler Spring Area At Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP)
Meet at 7 AM at the Spangler Spring area, GNMP. Turn right off Middle Street at its intersection with Liberty
Street in Gettysburg and go one short block to a left at the park entry. Follow the one-way road to the Spangler
Spring parking area. This outing is a SMAS tradition coinciding with International Migratory Bird Day (See
above). Easy walking on mostly paved areas. We'll be there into the afternoon, so depending on your schedule,
you can always join us anytime beyond the stated start time. Bring a chair if you wish and hang out.
Do not forget personal items including food, drink and appropriate apparel. This is prime spring migration time
and we should see a good selection of passerines and near-passerines as well as a mix of other species. Call the
leader for additional information, clarification, or with any questions. Facilities should be open.

Thursday June 2th - Pennsylvania State Game Lands #249
Meeting time is 7:30 AM at the Gameland's entrance located on Game Lands Road (aka State Game Land Road
depending on your map) off PA #234 about midway between Biglerville and US #15. Meet at the rustic sign for
the Gamelands just down the entry lane from Rte #234. Depending on the current management configuration of
the various areas at the time, we should be able to bird from our vehicles stopping at various vantage points.
Some may choose to walk. The area is mostly flat with easy walking.
The area includes woods and fields, and there is a stream along part of the road we will drive / walk along. We
will look for passage migrants and local resident and nesting species. Bring your optics, weather appropriate
clothing and any food or drink you may need. No facilities.

Accessing the SMAS Newsletter

A great feature of having the Newsletter on-line and receiving it via e-mail, is that you can always access a misplaced or discarded issue at a future date. You can access the Newsletter in several ways.
First, if you do not routinely discard your emails or you retain selected items in your in-box or transfer them to a
saved information folder or similar, you can always access them at a future date on your own system.
Second, we archive the electronic edition on the internet at the following url: perch.es
Simply copy the url and paste it into your browser search box or just type it in (Clicking may not always work).
The first header that appears is for the current (most recent) issue. In addition, there is a heading, by year, for
past quarter issues which we archive on the site. We have put the past issues here since we started the electronic
edition.

And, of course, per information above re the new SMAS Website, you can reference current & past issues there.
The url is: http://southmountainaudubon.org/