Changes…

Welcome to the Santa Monica Bay Audubon’s new year. We have a new president. Lu Plauzoles finished his three year term with grace and many thanks and has promised to continue to be the “go to” guy for the Snowy Plovers programs and conservation in general.

SMBAS is officially blogging ! We are excited about the change – we will be timely, we will have pictures and we will be proactive, not reactive. We will be mailing out bi-monthly calendars to those who request them and/or are not connected to the internet. We want to be in touch with all members. In many things there will be no changes: we will be having monthly general meetings with interesting and informative speakers (the first Tuesday of the month – check the blog or website first to reconfirm,), we will have monthly bird walks at Malibu Lagoon (4th Sunday of the month – always), we will give our birding class and we will have field trips around Southern California. We try to be responsive to our members and the environment; do let us know what interests you. Details of all programs and field trips will be on the blog and the web site.

We are interested in birds, habitat, native plants, environment, conservation, and closely related topics. We explore our area with field trips, we clean up our area on Coastal Cleanup Day and pick up the odd trash on every bird walk, we learn new things at meetings, we respond to pleas to help the environment, we replace our non-native plants with natives, we strive to lower our carbon footprint and we recycle –in other words, we would like to leave this earth better because we cared.

Your new president has lived on the west side for xx years … make that a long time. Her father was the family birder; he took up birding at age 60 and in the next 25 years saw over 5,600 bird species. He met Abigail King on a birding trip to Alaska; she remembered him fondly as the one with the sense of humor. We want to encourage birders of all ages. There is joy to be found in learning about and observing birds. My family tradition is just starting, and I did inherit my father’s binoculars. We hope that Santa Monica Bay Audubon will offer encouragement, education and pleasure to all its members.

— Ellen Vahan