At 6:07 pm President Barbara Saunders opened the meeting by thanking former President Andrew Rubenfeld for his services to the Society, and then introduced Vice-President Lydia Thomas.
Vice-President Thomas introduced Shaibal Mitra, Assistant Professor of Biology at CUNY Staten Island, who presented on “Bird Records in the Information Age: Implications for Data Quality.” Professor Mitra began his presentation by critiquing the methods and results that are captured in crowd-sourced data sets, specifically citing that the variance of estimates is greatly increased, and the independence of data is greatly reduced as people try to replicate each other’s efforts. He stated that the reliability of identifications of common birds has declined, and used a case study of Red-Breasted Merganser reports on Long Island to illustrate the point. He concluded by encouraging the audience to record data that accurately reflects your own habits and birding interests, and, based on probability, provided examples of when to make below species level identification on ebird.
At 7:32 pm President Barbara Saunders called the regular meeting of the Society to order.
In the absence of Recording Secretary Hamish Young, Conservation Committee Chair and Former Recording Secretary Rochelle Thomas read the minutes of the February 13, 2018 meeting, and they were approved as read.
President Saunders thanked all of the members who attended the Annual Dinner in March. She also thanked the outgoing officers and council members for their service, including: Andrew Rubenfeld, Stephen Chang and Junko Suzuki. She announced the current officers: Lydia Thomas (Vice-President), Anders Peltomaa (Secretary), Ruth Hart (Treasurer), Hamish Young (Recording Secretary), Jon Hyman (Editor), and herself.
President Saunders then announced that at the March Annual Dinner she had appointed a nominating committee composed of Alice Deutsch, Pat Levine and Megan Gavin. She then introduced Alice Deutsch who put forward the nominating committee’s proposed candidates for the Council: Marie-Claire Cunningham, Richard Fried, Kathleen Matthews, and Rochelle Thomas. The nominations were approved unanimously by the membership.
In the absence of Secretary Anders Peltomaa, Vice President Lydia Thomas announced seven new member applications, Brian Smith and Dale Dyer sponsored by Helen Hays, Paul Sweet, Abhijeet Sharma and Revathi Balasubramanian sponsored by Barbara Saunders, Rick Cook sponsored by Richard ZainEldeen, and MaryJane Boland sponsored by Rick Wright The nominations were approved unanimously by the membership.
President Saunders stated that the Great Gull Island Birdathon was scheduled for the weekend of May 12th-13th and encouraged the audience to participate or to consider sponsoring a participant.
Conservation Committee Chair Rochelle Thomas announced a beach clean-up at Plumb Beach on April 28th . The event will be hosted by NYC Audubon, Wild Bird Fund and The Linnaean Society.
At 7:42 pm President Saunders introduced former Eisenmann Medal recipient, Alvaro Jaramillo who presented “Colombia – Birding and Conservation.” Mr. Jaramillo opened his presentation by explaining that in conjunction with the National Audubon Society he has been working on conservation through economic development in several regions of the country. He stated that Colombia is the richest country for birds, with over 1900 species, with new discoveries occurring regularly. He explained why the region is so rich in species, in that it has two different oceans, while the Andes are separated into three distinct chains. He said that if you were to create the top biodiversity situation in the world you would create Colombia. Mr. Jaramillo continued to speak about his conservation work in the country and informed the audience that the Colombian government has now developed an entire infrastructure to encourage birding tourism, something that may not have happened anywhere else in the New World. If even a small village can make money from tourism, the forests will likely stay intact and conservation will be enhanced. He ended by encouraging the audience to visit soon, as he predicts tourism to Colombia to increase rapidly
The meeting was adjourned at 8:47 pm.
Respectfully submitted by
Rochelle Thomas, on behalf of Hamish Young, Recording Secretary