MBS: Will You Be Here?

Can you look this cute little Myrtle Warbler in the eye, and tell it that you're not going to be here?

From beautiful northern Ohio, Kenn and Kimberly write: The big bird festival known as the Midwest Birding Symposium was held in Lakeside, Ohio, in September 1997 and again in September 1999. Then it migrated west to Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, but it’s coming back to Lakeside this week: September 17 - 20, 2009.

When the symposium was held at Lakeside in 1997, Kenn gave a program and helped lead field trips. At the time, he was living far away, in the southwest. It wasn’t his first trip to Ohio, but it was his first detailed look at the migration on the Lake Erie shoreline, and he was very impressed by the area and the numbers of migrant birds.

When the symposium was held at Lakeside again in 1999, Kimberly attended the event and took in everything it had to offer. At the time, she was living in central Ohio. She had been birding for a while, but this was her first big bird festival, and she was very impressed with the energy and excitement of the event.

We didn’t meet until 2001, Kenn didn’t move to Ohio until 2005, but we’ll be going to this Midwest Birding Symposium as a happily married couple. This symposium is happening practically in our back yard. And we’ll be keeping busy while we’re there!

Black Swamp Bird Observatory (of which Kimberly is the executive director) and its youth program, the Ohio Young Birders Club, will be hosting youth activities at the symposium all day Saturday, Sept. 19, at the Wo-Ho-Mis building (yeah, Lakeside has funny names) across the street from South Auditorium. Kenn will be giving a keynote talk on Saturday from 10 to 11 a.m. in Hoover Auditorium. And in between other activities, we’ll both be spending time at a special booth in the vendors’ area, shared by Black Swamp Bird Observatory and Kaufman Field Guides.

Some bird-bloggers will be coming to the symposium and blogging from there. We probably WON’T be blogging there, because we won’t have time! But we’ll be around, and if you’re attending, we’d love to meet you.

But here’s the main point of this post: If you’re attending the Midwest Birding Symposium and you want to get out and see some actual birds, be sure to consult our BSBO birding pages! We have updates on migration, info about the latest conditions, and the best birding maps available for many of the local sites. BSBO is the authority on birding in northwestern Ohio, and we’re eager to share this area with others. Just go to our birding pages and check them out.

And if you’re not coming to the symposium this time, make a mental note to join us during spring or fall migration in some upcoming year. We are proud of the great birding here and we want you to see it too.