Missbirders,
The MOS Fall Meeting will take place the weekend of December 9-11, based at
the Lyric Hotel in Cleveland. The meeting will focus on RAPTORS! As such,
we are holding it later than usual in the "fall," to take advantage of the
diversity of wintering hawks in the Mississippi Delta.
The meeting will be headlined by two different raptor experts: Debbie Crum,
Executive Director & CEO of Mississippi Wildlife Rehabilitation
<https://www.mswildliferehab.org/>, and an expert practitioner of raptor
rehab; and Bryce W Robinson, a PhD student at Cornell University, where he
is a key participant in the Red-tailed Hawk project (
https://redtailedhawkproject.org/), which aims to shed light on big
mysteries of Red-tailed Hawk biology, especially the genetics and
relationships among their dramatically different-looking subspecies.
Debbie Crum will speak on Friday evening (venue to be announced), and will
bring at least 3 different live raptors for up-close viewing during her
presentation. The main field trip on Saturday will be into the north Delta,
to search for different subspecies of Red-tailed Hawks, along with other
diverse raptor species, and to learn about raptor identification & winter
ecology. The Saturday evening banquet will be held at the West End District
in Cleveland, where the Lyric Hotel is located. Bryce Robinson will be the
featured speaker Saturday evening, presenting results and information about
the Red-tailed Hawk Project. Registration will soon be available on the MOS
website.
New members are welcome--please consider joining (or re-joining) MOS! You
can find membership information here:
https://missbird.org/membership-2/
We hope to see you in December!
Jason Hoeksema, MOS Vice President
Oxford, MS
