President’s Message

Welcome to the new year! I hope everyone enjoyed a happy Christmas & Solstice holiday – we anxiously await the Christmas Bird Count results. As I have noted, it is our 71st Christmas bird count — quite a milestone!

I was delighted to see over 100 people in attendance at our November General Meeting, it has been a long time since Covid knocked our numbers back but between a great topic (Honeybees & wild bees), guests and the new Nature Sk butterfly guidebook on sale, people had a lot of reasons to come out – it was wonderful to see!

I want to acknowledge our own Jan Shadick who received the Nature Saskatchewan Conservation Award at the 2025 Fall Meet. As we know and appreciate, Jan is the founder and executive director for Living Sky Wildlife Rehabilitation since its inception in 2010. It is the largest wildlife rehabilitation facility in Saskatchewan. Jan is very well deserving. Thank you as well to her nominators who ensured that Jan received appropriate recognition!

I’ve also received some interesting notes over the past few weeks – I think they deserve your particular attention. At the general meeting I talked about an email from Dr. Leanne Grieves asking about the possibility of donations/loans of binoculars for her senior ornithology class. I just got an update from Leanne saying that she just heard from her department that they have come up with a funding mechanism to purchase binoculars for the ornithology class. Great news so we are all good! Second, we got an email from the City insect people about the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) insect asking that when we birders are out and about to please keep our eyes open for signs of this pest. The City suggests that woodpeckers can be valuable allies in early detection. In areas where EAB is present, woodpeckers often feed on the larvae living beneath the bark causing “blonding”. For further explanation go to the City of Saskatoon EAB information page.

I also received an encouraging letter from the folks at Blackstrap Provincial Park concerning the re-establishment of the Park Advisory Group (PAG) for Blackstrap Provincial Park. Our executive is looking forward to participating through our reps in this group. If you are interested in this, please let me know!

This leads me to a very important topic, renewal of our executive. We are getting to that time when we will be looking for new board members and coordinators to serve for the next few years. Whether it is as a general director or a specific co-ordinator such as programming, conservation, or social media, it is a very rewarding opportunity to help with the leadership of our organization. So please consider volunteering with us!

Don’t forget we have Kids in Nature Grants to award in the next few weeks – check out the notice in the newsletter and if you know a group, please let them know about KIN!

So, the book for this cold and dark month is Flight of the Godwit by Bruce Beehler. It’s a fascinating read of the summer travels the author undertook a few years ago during Covid. His goal was to learn more about his favourite shorebird, the Hudsonian Godwit and what he calls the magnificent seven or the shorebird royalty, species that mostly make their way through Saskatchewan each year. In fact, he writes of stopping in Moose Jaw and Saskatoon areas to observe many of these shorebirds. Interestingly, he makes a small plea for birders to have their hearing testing regularly, so we don’t miss the quieter or distant birdsongs – good point! I’m reminded of a note Stan Shadick sent to me a few years ago about the Hudsonian Godwit (HUGO). Stan wrote: “Way back in the summer of 1973, I worked as a summer student for the Canadian Wildlife Service. That summer I was shown the remarkable concentration of many hundreds of migrating Hudsonian Godwits at Porter Lake.Some experts then suggested that perhaps 10% of the world’s population of Hudsonian Godwits was using that lake.

I have visited Porter Lake on several occasions in recent years and normally find at most a very small number of HUGO individuals. I have never found more than a few individuals in recent years.”

Beehler’s writing inspires us to look forward to the spring and fall as these migratory birds fly amazing distances each year. We know our region plays a big part of these annual journeys. He urges us to step up and protect our valuable wetlands as much as we can – we know these shorebirds along with the song and grassland birds are at perilous risk!

On that note, I hope you can get out a bit, enjoy the weather, and hopefully see some of the birds that call Saskatoon home year-round!

David Forbes