Paul Szmal: It is 840 on FLX Morning, as we continue, the temperature now up at 67 under clouds and sun. And I'd like to introduce my guests in studio. We have Steve Van Kirk, first off. Good morning, Steve. How are you doing, Paul?
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Doing good, doing good.
Paul Szmal: And also joining us is Kevin Armstrong. Good morning, Kevin.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Good morning, Paul.
Paul Szmal: And they are both from the Eaton Birding Society, an organization that, well, if you haven't heard of, stick around for the next few minutes and you're going to learn a little bit more about the organization. Which one of you wants to kind of fill me in a little bit on the history of the organization and how it's gotten to this point today?
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: I can give you a little bit of an outline. Formed in 1932 as the Geneva Birding Club, and then later changed to the Eaton Birding Society after Elon H. Eaton, who was a biology professor at Hobart. He wrote the first edition of Birds in New York, which is a comprehensive three-volume set of every bird in the state.
Paul Szmal: Wow. Quite impressive. That must have, back in the day, that must have been quite the undertaking to do that because you didn't have the technology that you have today.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Yeah, yeah. All just field work. Yeah.
Paul Szmal: Well, present day, Kevin, what does the Eaton Birding Society do and how does it keep track of the various bird species around?
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Well, we have a number of field trips. Almost every weekend we go on a field trip that's somewhat local. We do a lot of trips out to Montezuma. We go to a lot of public parks around the area. We serve several counties, including Ontario, Seneca, Yates, and Wayne County. We kind of specialize around those areas. From time to time we'll arrange a trip to a different area. We made two trips to the Adirondacks as a group this year to see crossbills and some of the boreal birds. We annually make a trip up to Derby Hill, which is in Mexico, New York, to watch raptors migrate back in in the spring.
Paul Szmal: Wow. I didn't know we had raptors in the area. Derby Hill is the place to see them. They make the curve around Lake Ontario so you don't have to fly over the lake. They kind of curve around and they see gold eagles, goshawks, every type of hawk that you can imagine, and a lot of other songbirds that migrate through there as well. So you're going to get the full experience, shall we say, if you go on a couple of these field trips and check out some of the different bird species that are in the area.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Yep. We're all after a new bird that we've never seen before and this is the way to do it. We have members who can identify all the birds by song. It's pretty exciting. A lot of fun. Can identify by song. It's pretty impressive.
Paul Szmal: There are birds that everybody would recognize whether they can name the bird or not. For instance, a black-capped chickadee. They're all over the place. Most people know what they sound like. It's a little chick-a-dee-dee-dee sound. But they have, like many birds, if not most birds, they have many different sounds and there are people in the group who can hear a little chip sound, like a little chip-chip up in the tree and say, oh, that's a chickadee.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Wow. That amazes me. I can't do that.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. I'm just thinking the amount of knowledge that requires is pretty significant.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: It's incredible. Yeah.
Paul Szmal: Now, you do some meetings every year, right? Usually what, about a half a dozen?
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Yeah, we have six meetings a year. They're held October through April and at our meetings we have guest speakers. Often they're authors of ornithology books or people that work in various fields of conservation. And they give little presentations as part of these meetings.
Paul Szmal: Yep. They sign their books at the meetings and basically fill us in, give us the long and short version. It's talks and slideshows and always very interesting. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it's kind of like what I did on my, it's almost like a show and tell of what I was able to find that then maybe you guys in the group can go out and look for yourselves.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Some of that, but they also, like we have a group that comes in with owls, they bring owls in.
Paul Szmal: Oh, wow.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: And they'll show us the owls and they're rehabbers that come and bring birds that they have that they can't put back in the wild, they'll bring and show them to us. Just about anything related to birds. We're just looking for something new and interesting. So if anybody out there would like to consider it, we'd love to hear from you.
Paul Szmal: Right. And by the end of 2025, we have two authors on written ornithology books and a rehabber coming in between October, November, and December.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Wow.
Paul Szmal: Okay. And anybody's welcome to come to our meetings. We have them at 7 p.m. at the Finger Lakes Visitor Center, 7 p.m. the first Monday of every month. Oh, okay. Well, we'll refer back to that when we wrap up the conversation. We're talking with Steve Van Kirk, who's the president, Kevin Armstrong, the vice president of the Eaton Birding Society here this morning on FLX Morning. I wanted to ask about the scholarship program that you guys do.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Okay. Yeah. It's the Eaton Award. We've given for many years. It's now a biannual award for... It's targeted for students that are in some kind of environmental study. And we send out letters to all the various colleges in the area looking for applicants. It's $2,000 every other year. And we look, of course, very interested in supporting that kind of thing in young people. And the advantage to us is that they will then later come and give a presentation to our group.
Paul Szmal: Oh, okay. So it's always very interesting.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Yeah. Yeah. Things kind of come full circle that way.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. Absolutely. You learn some very, very interesting things from these folks. Right. Right. And then you do a couple of big events a year. One of them is the Great Christmas Bird Count.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Yep. So we get together early in the morning, before daylight, in groups. And we have various quadrants in the area. And groups of two, three, four of us will spend the day going around counting every bird that we see in those areas. While we're doing that, the program is going on internationally. So all over the world, people are doing the same thing within the same week. Not necessarily on the same day, but within the same week. And it's just a big, fun event. And at the end of the day, we all get together. We list the birds that we saw, and we have pizza, and just another fun day.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. We also have, in September, the Friends of Montezuma host an annual event. They call it the Muck Race. And that's pretty much the same thing, but these are teams that are sponsored. And they're out in Montezuma, and they are counting birds, too. For 24 hours. The college teams, they'll spend all night out in the woods, listening for owls and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Chris Lejewski from the Montezuma Audubon Center is a regular guest on the program. We've talked a little bit about the Muck Race, and how it's the college teams. And I want to say it's a little bit of competition, but obviously, the main goal is to identify the different types and numbers of birds. Now, one of the neat things about having the Montezuma Refuge here is we get a lot of migrating birds.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Very much. Very much so. Especially in the spring and the fall, I describe it as crazy time out there. It's just amazing how many different species come through. And one of the things that the Eaton Birding Society is working on to help kind of close a coverage gap in the area is the erecting of what's called a MODIS antenna. Want to, you guys, explain to me what this is and what this is about?
Paul Szmal: Yeah, we're working with Dr. Deutschlander from Hobart. He's their ornithologist over there. MODIS is an international network of antennas that capture migrating birds and wildlife right down to insects. Birds will be captured. Tiny transmitters will be attached to them in sort of a backpack sort of a method. And as these birds migrate, they pass these MODIS towers, which are all over the world, and we're able to track the migration of the various species in real time with this electronic equipment. We have a sort of a gap here in the central Finger Lakes. We're pretty well covered at the north end. We're pretty well covered at the south end. But right here in the middle of the Finger Lakes, there's a gap. We're trying to close that gap. We're proposing to erect an antenna and get the equipment on it and start cataloging some birds ourselves.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Ah, that sounds like it'll be a good way to help aid with keeping track of the migration rather than just trying to jot everything down manually.
Paul Szmal: Very much so. And it brings up a very large focus of our group and most birding groups is citizen science. It's contributing to the data and the information so we can know what's going on out there. And a lot of species. I just had, just before you came in, had the folks from the Geneva City Green Committee and the Geneva BID were in here. And I know that you've worked with the Geneva BID a little bit on habitat and bird housing in the area.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Yeah, we're having a lot of fun with that. I think we've convinced them to increase the Purple Martin colonies out here at the Geneva Park by the lake. And we're talking about putting up owl boxes. I secured a couple of wood duck boxes. So we're kind of help out there on the bird end of their project.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, absolutely. Now, for people that want to join the Eaton Birding Society, maybe come to one of the meetings or get out and enjoy one of the field trips, how do they go about doing that?
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Probably the easiest way would be to go online to our website. It's eatonbirdingsociety.org and they can donate or join and information about meetings and pretty much everything about us is there. And then the meetings are the first Monday of the month, 7 o'clock at the Geneva Finger Lakes Welcome Center here in Geneva.
Paul Szmal: Correct. That's right. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you guys for being here. Much appreciated. And best of luck on the upcoming bird count.
Steve Van Kirk, Kevin Armstrong: Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Anybody that's interested in birds, come join us. We have a ball.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. Sounds like it would be a lot of fun to get out there and see some of these various species. So it's 8.51 on FLX morning.
