NVBA NEWS BLOG
Welcome to the blog for Northern Virginia Bird Alliance, a wealth of resources about northern Virginia birds, wildlife, habitat conservation and restoration, native plants, wildlife-friendly gardening, advocacy and more.
We’re Recruiting
NVBA relies heavily on its members to execute its mission, and we’re currently looking for members interested in serving on our Board of Directors.
Photo: Eastern Bluebirds, Danny Brown/Audubon Photography Awards
NVBA relies heavily on its members to execute its mission, and we’re currently looking for members interested in serving on our Board of Directors. Your interest in and commitment to the birds and what they need are the primary qualifications, but we are also hoping to recruit new board members with strengths in the following areas:
Finance and Accounting, to help with investments as well as month-to-month financial matters
Conservation, especially to help with Stretch Our Parks
Communications, including writers and editors, especially those with social media expertise
Diversity and Inclusion, to increase our reach and impact across all northern Virginia Communities
Adult Education, to help with bird- and conservation-related programming
If you are interested in getting involved, or if you have any questions, please contact Libby Lyons at president@nvbirdalliance.org.
Please join us!
ASNV Announces Candidates for Offices and the Board of Directors
These individuals have been nominated for positions on ASNV’s board. Read on to meet the candidates.
Photo: American Robin, Mick Thompson
Elizabeth Lyons – Candidate for President for a two-year term. Member of the Board since July 2021.
Greg Butcher – Candidate for Vice President for a one-year term. Vice President since July 2016 and member of the Board since July 2014.
Ron Grimes – Candidate for Treasurer for a two-year term. Member of the Board since July 2021.
Connie Ericson – Candidate for Secretary for a two-year term. Member of the Board since July 2018, Secretary since July 2020.
Joel Beauvais – Candidate for the Board of Directors for a three-year term.
Tom Blackburn – Candidate for the Board of Directors for a three-year term. Member of the Board since July 2016, President since July 2018.
Rita Peralta – Candidate for the Board of Directors for a three-year term.
Stacey Remick-Simkins – Candidate for the Board of Directors for a three-year term.
Jerry Touval – Candidate for the Board of Directors for a three-year term.
Tom Wood – Candidate for the Board of Directors for a three-year term. Member of the Board since 2019.
Join us in-person for our Annual Meeting and Audubon Afternoon, “A Year in the Life of an Owl”
ASNV will have its first in-person Audubon Afternoon in more than two years on June 5.
Photo: Northern Screech Owl, Randy Streufert
ASNV will have its first in-person Audubon Afternoon in more than two years on June 5.
Northern Screech Owl, Randy Streufert
Four live owls will be the stars of the show. We’ll gather informally starting at 2:30PM in the cafeteria of the National Wildlife Federation Building, 11100 Wildlife Center Drive, in Reston. At 3:00PM we’ll have a brief Annual Meeting where we will elect officers and directors. Our main program will begin at 3:15PM, when Secret Garden Birds and Bees will present “A Year in the Life of an Owl,” featuring four live owls for you to see and photograph: a Barn Owl, a Screech Owl, a Great Horned Owl, and a Barred Owl. This is an event the whole family will enjoy!
We welcome any food and drink you would like to share with everyone during the informal portion of the program.
Learn more about our Annual Meeting here.
ASNV is Looking for New Board Members
Would you like to help Audubon Society of Northern Virginia? We’re looking for candidates to join our Board of Directors.
Photo: American Robins, Dennis Atwell/Audubon Photography Awards
Would you like to help Audubon Society of Northern Virginia? We’re looking for candidates to join our Board of Directors. Board members help to ensure that ASNV fulfills its mission through oversight of the organization’s activities. They also help manage ASNV’s wide variety of activities through our committees. As a Board member you can:
Expand the scope of our activities to underserved communities in Northern Virginia
Help plan our classes, workshops, and special events
Protect birds, wildlife, and their habitats by submitting testimony and written statements to local, State, and Federal governments
Plan bird walks and surveys of birds, butterflies, and other wildlife
Work with public land managers to encourage the creation and preservation of wildlife-friendly habitat
Write and edit articles for our newsletter and website
Ensure that young people learn to love and protect our environment through teacher scholarships, conservation grants to schools, and oversight of student interns.
Our Nominating Committee is evaluating candidates now. If you’re interested, send an email no later than May 5th to President@audubonva.org, with brief background information and we’ll get in touch with you.
ASNV Membership Elects Board Members and Thanks Departing Board Members
On June 7, 2020 ASNV held its Annual Membership Meeting “virtually” for the first time since our founding in 1980. Members elected three new board members and a current member to three-year terms.
Photo: S. Hermann & F. Richter via Pixabay
On June 7, 2020 ASNV held its Annual Membership Meeting “virtually” for the first time since our founding in 1980. Members elected three new board members and a current member to three-year terms. We’re thrilled to have such talented and dedicated people guiding ASNV into the future.
Greg Butcher has been on the ASNV Board of Directors since 2014. Greg is the Migratory Species Coordinator for U.S. Forest Service International Programs. He is a Ph.D. ornithologist who has worked for the National Audubon Society, American Birding Association, Partners in Flight, Birders World magazine and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Greg is a recognized public speaker and interpreter for bird conservation and ecology worldwide. He welcomes the opportunity to contribute to Audubon's environmental mission at the local level.
Judy Gallagher has been an Audubon member for more than 25 years. She loves birding, but is most passionate about documenting insects and spiders and their behavior and environment through macro photography. Judy is a Certified Master Naturalist and a charter member of the Prince William Wildflower Society. She has a Certificate in Natural History Field Studies from Audubon Naturalist Society. She joined ASNV's wonderful Natural Resources Survey when she retired five years ago and spends most of her free time roaming natural spaces in Northern Virginia looking for bugs. She also participates in several Christmas Bird Counts.
Joan Haffey couldn’t help but become a birder through osmosis and the patience of the birding community in Cape May, NJ where she has vacationed for 30 years. Beginning with NJ Audubon, she is an ongoing and active member of three Audubon chapters. Joan is an Arlington Regional Master Naturalist whose focus is citizen science. This includes participation in regular natural resource surveys and bird counts as well as stream water quality monitoring. She helps enter historical data for some of these surveys in the eBird and PollardBase databases. Until she retired, Joan worked in global health in approximately 45 countries around the globe, including long-term assignments in West Africa, Central America and the People’s Republic of China. She is fluent in Spanish and comme ci, comme ça in French.
Betsy Martin spent her career as a researcher improving methods and measurements in the decennial census and government surveys. When she retired from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2007, she enrolled in the then-new Virginia Master Naturalist program and embarked on a second career as an environmental activist and volunteer. She is an Audubon at Home Ambassador, and since 2012 has served as coordinator for the Audubon at Home program in Fairfax County. Now she is a co-director. She’s a founder and president of the Friends of Little Hunting Creek, leads cleanups, and works to preserve riparian habitat on the creek. She’s organized demonstrations urging companies and associations to take responsibility for the litter their products create, and advocates for laws to prevent litter. Betsy serves on Fairfax Supervisor Dan Storck’s Environmental Advisory Committee and is a member of the Fairfax County Chesapeake Bay Exception Review Committee.
Thank You to our Departing Board Members
Andrea Auerbach, Robin Duska and Traci McGillicuddy joined the ASNV board in July of 2017.
Andrea Auerbach served on the Youth Education Committee which administers mini-grants to schools and scholarships for teachers to attend Educator’s Week at Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine. Andrea also volunteered to help with children’s activities at numerous public events and shared her technical and editing expertise with several other committees.
Robin Duska spent many hours as the Co-coordinator of ASNV’s Audubon at Home program. She spearheaded a management plan that focused the program on specific goals and objectives. At the 2019 National Audubon Convention Robin was invited to join a panel discussing environmental work with faith communities. The invitation grew from Audubon at Home’s success in winning and managing Burke Grants for five diverse faith communities in our region.
Traci McGillicuddy served on the Youth Education Committee administering grants and volunteering for many public events, especially those involving children. She also coordinated a successful partnership between ASNV and the Children’s Science Center to teach basic birding skills and support a summer program for children and their families to study our regional birds.