The Naturalists' Club of Broome County, NY

We’ll take a look at what’s going on with our trees - in the recent past and today - and what the future might hold. Environmental and ecological changes are accelerating, and trees are a sort of visible canary-in-the-coal-mine indicator of nature’s health. We’ll look at a few species from American Chestnut to Ashes to Eastern Hemlock. Are the problems manageable? Jeff Smith is a Naturalist and board member at Waterman Conservation Education Center (WCEC), with a focus on wetland…

Linda Spielman will be the guest speaker for our January meeting. She will discuss techniques for finding and identifying mammal tracks. Linda has been an environmental educator and student of animal tracking for over twenty-five years. She has studied tracking with Charles Worsham, Paul Rezendes, Susan Morse, George Leoniak, and Tom Brown. The tracker and artist Charles Worsham encouraged her to use drawing as a learning tool. Linda has been drawing ever since and loves the way drawing a track…

Tom Powell will be the guest speaker for our February meeting. He will discuss how anthropogenic climate change poses multifaceted threats to insect diversity well beyond the intuitive stresses of warmer summer temperatures. We will discuss some of the major ways that insects in our region are expected to be imperiled by changing seasonal regimes in the coming decades, including the regulation of life cycle timing, aspects of overwintering physiology, and altered interactions with other species.   As always, Naturalists'…

GOLDEN EAGLES OF THE CATSKILLS Peg DiBenedetto will be our guest speaker this month.  This ZOOM presentation highlights the work of the Delaware-Otsego Audubon Society and the Eastern Golden Eagle Project to prove the existence of Golden Eagles in the Catskill Mountains. DiBenedetto volunteers with the NYS DEC, is the Board Chair of The Catskill Center for Conservation and Development and a Trustee of the Michael Kudish Natural History Preserve. She spent 20 years working in land management and holds…

Our April guest speaker is Cam Winzinger (they/them), an alum from Binghamton University, who studied environmental science as an undergraduate and community ecology under Dr. Julian Shepherd during their master’s degree. Cam has also previously worked as a naturalist for the City of Binghamton Parks and Recreation Department and currently works as a Nature Educator for CCE Broome. Their talk will focus on the fascinating world of Broome’s amphibians including preferred habitats, life histories, and notable behaviors. As a special…

Our guest speaker for our May meeting will be local photographer Steve Brigode.   If you can't join us in person, use the Zoom link to join: Zoom Meeting Information Use this link to join the meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86125429140?pwd=N2pjMy9mU3RBZTFSZ1JiVGpyam9mUT09 Meeting ID: 861 2542 9140     Passcode: 948386 All participants will be muted until the question and answer period of the presentation. You will be able to join the meeting beginning at 7:00pm. 

Our September guest speaker is Rick Bunting, always a club favorite! His program will present his most interesting wildlife encounters that have been subjects of his continuing posts which he’s looking forward to sharing with his Naturalists’ Club friends. Rick Bunting is Professor Emeritus from the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam where he served as Chair of Music Education and conductor of the renowned Crane Chorus. Previous to his work at Potsdam he taught at the Bainbridge-Guilford Central…

Our guest speaker for our October meeting will be our board member, Ryan Andrew.