The Montclair Bird Club
Celebrating Over 100 Years of Birding
Montclair Bird Club Meetings
February 12, 2025, 7:30 pm, on Zoom
Declining Shorebird Numbers and What We Can Do About It
by Soheil Zendeh
Photo by Rick Wright
Since the 1980s, there has been a documented crash in shorebird counts worldwide, particularly in eastern North America. We discuss the situation and dive into some of the evidence of these declines. Then we discuss the need for action, which includes the need to familiarize ourselves with local shorebird species. We can then use information gathered by us as individuals and bird clubs to influence local, state and national policies that affect shorebird conservation.
I have created a shorebird identification phone app, applicable to northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. It is visual, using photos, both mine and those from many generous contributors. The app is available at no cost on the Bird Observer website:
https://www.birdobserver.org/Better-Birding/New-England-Shorebird-Guide
We will explore this app's features. We hope we can get you familiar with it so it will be useful when shorebirds return in the next few months.
If you wish to explore the issues in advance, here is an article by some of the foremost shorebird researchers in this hemisphere:
https://academic.oup.com/condor/article/125/2/duad003/7031074
Soheil Zendeh was born in Tehran, Iran, and grew up there and in Tangier, Morocco. He has been a resident of eastern Massachusetts for over 60 years. His interest in shorebirds began in the 1970s; he began to contribute Boston-area shorebird data to Manomet's International Shorebird Surveys (ISS) in 1976. Soheil currently lives with his wife, Christine, in a co-housing complex in Littleton, Massachusetts.
April 9, 2025, 7:30 pm, on Zoom
Birds, Gods, and Humans: Avian Roles in Medieval Art and Literature
by Alison L. P. Beringer
In this beautifully illustrated lecture, Alison Beringer explores the textual descriptions and pictorial representations of some of the best-known birds in the literature and myth of the European Middle Ages. What is it about certain birds that made them so appealing to our cultural forebears, and what made humans attribute particular functions and meanings to each?
Alison L. P. Beringer is Associate Professor of Classics and Humanities at Montclair State University. She holds an M. A. in Classics from the University of Victoria, an A. M. in German from the University of Illinois, and a Ph. D. in German Studies from Princeton University. Her work focuses on German medieval literature and culture, in particular the reception of classical antiquity. Professor Beringer's first book, The Sight of Semiramis, explored the origins and transformations of the figure of the mythical queen, from the Babylonian empire to the early modern period; her current project is a study of the role of sculpture and sculptures in German literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An avid birder in her free time, she pays extra attention in her scholarship to the presence of birds in texts and pictures produced in the European Middle Ages.
Recent Meetings
January 2024: A Man, a Plan, a Whole Lotta Birds, by Rick Wright
February 2024: Whimbrels on the Texas Coast, by Sam Wolfe
March 2024: Searching for the Goshawk, by Conor Mark Jameson
April 2024: The Life of the Whooping Crane, by Paityn Bower
May 2024: Birding Colombia's Andes, by Debbie Bifulco
June 2024: Annual Members and Friends Meeting
September 2024: The American Woodcock, by Pete Axelrod
October 2024: Birding the Great Plains, by Tom Gannon
November 2024: Through the Looking Glass with a Grateful Birder, by Kevin Karlson
January 2025: Audubon Redrawn, by Roberta Olson
For the Zoom link to our online meetings, e-mail montclairbirdclub100@gmail.com.