Establishing Sister Birding Club Relationships Between the U.S. and Honduras -- A Few, Small Steps

               Four days of bird monitoring around the Lake Yojoa area with new friends from many of the birding clubs in Honduras culminated in an exciting closing ceremony on Sunday 16 October 2016.  All of the sponsors received recognition for their roles in helping make the Lake Yojoa Birding Blitz a success.  Their thanks were well-deserved.  Thirty field trips to various locations in the area resulted in 299 bird species recorded.  More importantly from a conservation perspective, the Blitz contributed data for monitoring of bird abundance and diversity in these locations.

               The Blitz also provided a wonderful opportunity for birders from clubs around the country to meet, go birding together, and support each other.  ASHO, the Honduras Ornithological Association, deserves a lot of credit for fostering the development of birders through the local clubs.  One aspect of support provided to the clubs attending the Blitz was that a representative from each participating club received a copy of the brand new guide to birds of northern Central America by Jesse Fagan and Oliver Komar.  Club members can share this resource when they go on field trips in their local areas.

               I was honored (and a bit surprised) to be given the chance to speak to the gathered group about my dream of establishing sister birding clubs between North and Central America.  Quite nervously, I started to give my prepared elevator speech in Spanish.  About three sentences into my speech, I realized I wanted to share a deeper sense of what I had gotten out of my experience with the Honduran birders at the Blitz.  Thankfully, Oliver Komar graciously translated what I had to say after that.

               My main point was that the reality of my experiences with birders at the Blitz was even better than my wildest dreams.  I was energized by the enthusiasm, knowledge, desire, and helpfulness of all the participants.  The Honduran clubs love the birds here, including all the Neotropical migratory species they share with us in the U.S.  We have so much to share and to learn from each other, and I was really excited by how receptive everyone was to the idea of sister clubs.  Overall, the future of birds and of birding in Honduras is in great hands through the work of ASHO and the birding clubs here. 

Throughout the Blitz, ASHO provided a chance for data to be collected and for clubs to interact and support each other.  A few other visitors also provided some support.  Wilmer Fernández, a native Honduran now living in Minnesota, brought several soccer uniforms to donate to participants who play soccer.  John van Dort, originally from the Netherlands and now living in southern Honduras, donated several binoculars. 

Over the course of the Blitz, I had given many of my new friends some of the items donated by members of the Cayuga Bird Club and by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in an informal, low-key way, just one friend to another.  Then at the closing ceremony, I was provided the opportunity to publicly donate two pairs of binoculars from the Cayuga Bird Club to members of one of the newest birding clubs in Honduras, the Jilgueros (Solitaires) from La Paz department.

Here I am presenting binoculars donated by members of the Cayuga Bird Club in

Ithaca, NY (thanks Donna Scott and Wes Blauvelt) to Sarahí Morales and David Hernández

of Club Jilgueros (Solitaires) from La Paz department.  Photo credit: Mayron Mejía.

Each birder who took part in the Blitz was presented with a certificate of participation.  I received mine from Alejandra Reyes, director of protected areas for Honduras. Overall, the atmosphere of the closing ceremonies reflected well the excitement, dedication, and support for each other that I had experienced throughout the blitz.  Even as a visitor from the U.S., I felt empowered by the ceremony to do more for birds and birding.

Here I am receiving my participation certificate from Alejandra Reyes, Director of

Protected Areas in Honduras.  Photo credit: Mayron Mejía.  

My participation in the Lake Yojoa Birding Blitz allowed me to start individual-level relationships with some new birding friends.  By the end of the event, we had started to work together to develop club-to-club relationships between the Cayuga Bird Club, to which I belong, and several of the birding clubs in Honduras.  I am really looking forward to working with others to nurture these relationships as they develop. 

 

All of the participants in the 2016 Lake Yojoa Birding Blitz in Honduras. 

I am standing in the back row, 5th person from the right.  Photo credit: Mayron Mejía.

Lake Yojoa Birding Blitz was a Huge Success!

The Lake Yojoa Birding Blitz was a great success!  About forty participants from all over Honduras (and two of us from the United States) spent four days observing, identifying, and documenting birds at about ten locations in the Lake Yojoa area.  With a few more eBIrd checklists to the submitted (yes, that includes me although I have not had access to wifi for a couple days), we are up to 299 species found by the participants.  Most importantly for me, I not only enjoyed finding and seeing almost 200 species of birds myself over the four days, but I found a couple of dozen new friends while participating in the Blitz. 

If you have been following this blog over the last couple of weeks, you know that I have traveled to Honduras as part of an effort to establish sister birding clubs in Central and North America.  Many populations of Neotropical migratory bird species are declining.  Major causes for those declines include loss of habitat on breeding grounds in North America and on wintering grounds in Central America.  Birders in North America and Central America are inexorably linked by the birds that travel between our homes, by our love of the birds, by our concern for those birds, and by our desire to help conserve those birds on into the future. 

I can’t possibly list all the new friends I met from the groups represented at the Blitz.  Here are just a few of the new friends I met from about half of the Clubs in attendance... 

Two of the youngest participants in the Blitz were Norman Espinoza and Daniel Torres.  Both are 16-years old and fairly new birders.  Along with their adult leader, Francisco Rovelo, they represented a youth birding club called the Hummingbirds.  They are a relatively new club associated with Las Tanunas Club (named after Lesser Roadrunners) from in Gracias in Lempira Department.  Daniel and Norman may have been the only birders participating in the Blitz who saw more life birds than me.  Their enthusiasm, deep desire to learn birds, and their wonderful good nature especially brightened a couple of the field trips in which I participated.  I think they would make a couple of great candidates to attend the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Young Birder event next summer.  Although they spoke English pretty well, I gave them Spanish-language Kaufman guide to birds of North America (donated by Gladys Birdsall), so they would have information in Spanish about the Neotropical Migratory Birds we share.

New friends Daniel Torres (left), adult leader Francisco Rovelo, and Norman Espinosa (right) from

Club Hummingbird in Gracias, Honduras (Lempira Department).  Photo credit: Francisco Rovelo.

Two awesome new friends from San Pedro Sula are Hector Moncada and Marlen López.  They are from Club Zorzales (named after Clay-colored Thrush) in San Pedro Sula.  In addition to being a birder, Hector is a scout leader with a deep passion for conservation.  One of his great ideas is to go birding with his friends from the club and then get everyone to go plant some native trees as a habitat restoration project.  He has been birding for about a year, and already has an incredible handle on identifying Honduran birds by sight and sound.  Marlen studies bees and is a bee-keeper.  She only started birding this past spring, and I was impressed that she wanted to attend this event.  In addition to studying all the birds carefully through her binoculars, she took many pictures so she could study those back home.    

Angel Fong is from Los Alzacuanes Club (aka Migratory Raptors) in Tegucigalpa.  An accountant by training, Angel also is an avi-tourism guide.  Not only is he friendly and helpful, he made me laugh a lot!  He was on several of the field trips I attended.  Often he was the person in charge of recording the species and abundance data for entry into eBird.

A boat load of new friends!  Guide William Orellana (left), Angel Fong from Club Alzacuanes in

Tegucigalpa, Victor Gálvez from Club Clorofonia, me, and Marlen López from Club Los Zorzales

in San Pedro Sula.  Photo credit: William Orellana.  

David Hernández and Sarahí Morales are from Club Jilgueros (Goldfinch) in Marcala (La Paz department).   This Club just got started and they don’t have much in the way of birding equipment or resources.  We chose this club to receive the two binoculars donated by Donna Scott and Wes Blauvelt from the Cayuga Bird Club in Ithaca, New York, which is my home bird club.

In my next blog post, I’ll share some information about some of my other new friends from Club Tanunas (Lesser Roadrunner) in Gracias, the local Club in Lake Yojoa – Clorofonia (named for Chlorophonia), and from the Honduran Institute for Forest Conservation, Protected Areas and Wildlife (ICF).  Members from all the groups participating in the Blitz expressed a lot of excitement about the ideas of developing a sister-club relationship with birding clubs in North America.  Throughout the Lake Yojoa Birding Blitz, it was obvious that these mostly young adults are passionate about birds and about bird conservation.  They are very interested in sharing their experiences and their birds with anyone who comes to Honduras to visit.  I hope all of you reading this blog will help support this effort to establish sister birding clubs.