We are asking you to consider giving us your support this year. Remember, this is our only fund raising effort. We don’t pester you weekly, monthly, or throughout the year. Your help allows our unpaid all-volunteer group to accomplish our mission “to be a center for wildlife education, habitat protection, and conservation issues that involve birds.”

These efforts are of increasing importance in view of the past decreasing support for environmental issues coming from the Federal Administration.

You can DONATE four different ways:

• With the self-addressed envelope enclosed with the annual appeal letter (sent to those already on our membership rolls)
• Send a check to our mailing address: SMBAS, PO Box 4189, Malibu, CA 90264-4189
• With PayPal using the PayPal Widget located on the right side bar of the blog
• With a Credit Card using the same PayPal Widget located on the right side bar of the blog.  You do not have to join PayPal to donate, just have your credit card “standing by.”

Please take a moment and make a donation today.

We continue our strong backing of all things birds, habitat, native plants, the environment and conservation through education, field trips, bird monitoring, speakers and grants to students and conservation groups.

Please take a minute to read the annual appeal letter below and see what we have been doing this year.

Thank you,

Armando Martinez
President

Link to our online 2026-27 Calendar of Field Trips and Programs

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November 5, 2026

Dear Friend of SMBAS,

This is our annual and only chapter fundraising request to help finance our environmental activities. This coming season may be a roller-coaster ride for planning around the El Niño conditions. Students earning one of our grants may have problems performing field research, snowy plovers might relocate if beaches wash out, field trips may be cancelled. The beach at Malibu Lagoon already is beginning to wash away. After the winter passes, our new partnership with the California Breeding Bird Atlas will give us a chance to calculate the reluctance or resilience of birds willing to breed in California after such volatile weather.

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Your support helps us to continue:

• Education
  • Our grant to Nature Nexus helps pay for buses that bring inner city children to the Ballona Wetlands for an environmental program. This fun, hands-on program gives kids experience at various stations to look at marsh water through a microscope, learn about native and invasive plants and pull weeds, discover the specialized ways birds hunt, and watch wildlife at the river.
  • Monthly kids and parents walk on the fourth Sunday, 10 AM, introduces beginners to the Malibu Lagoon where they learn about the birds and migration, plants, and lagoon water cycles.
  • Monthly Malibu Lagoon 8:30 AM walk for experienced and beginning birders, plus bird walks to other areas throughout the year.
• Public Outreach
  • We have a zoom program every first Tuesday (October-May except January) at 7:30 PM with speakers covering subjects on migration, bird behavior, birding hot spots and conservation. Both current and archived programs are announced on the blog www.smbasblog.com.
  • We contribute to: food for the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve bird feeders; restoration work at Madrona Marsh; Western Snowy Plover reserve fencing in Santa Monica; and the Student Conservation Association (who will probably be doing necessary repair work around So. Calif. after El Niño).
• Conservation
  • Six grants were awarded last year to college students doing environmental research. UCLA students have been doing tremendous work on the effects of the covid pandemic on the large flocks of Juncos at the UC campuses.
• Bird Monitoring
  • Besides over four decades of bird censusing at Malibu Lagoon, volunteers from our group do bird counts of Western Snowy Plovers, Brown Pelicans, and Least Terns in Malibu and Santa Monica. This information is important for State, Federal and local agencies to track declining populations.

All in all, this coming year is probably going to give us some unexpected events impacting the bird population and the environment. Your support this year is vital for the challenges facing us this winter and is tax deductible as we are a 501(c) organization. We appreciate your past donations and hope you will continue to support us for the coming year. Be sure to check our blog before going to any field trips because the weather may force us to change the location or cancel the trip.

Armando Martinez
President SMBAS

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Please check the blog www.smbasblog.com for changes and updates.
[posted by Chuck Almdale]