President’s Message

Dear members, all the very best of the season in whatever special way you may celebrate the best of people, our hope for peace in the world and a prosperous new year. As your president, I get some very interesting and thought-provoking emails which may not seem like much but one caught my eye. Someone was asking about wrens nesting in the Saskatoon area, and this was in the middle of a cold spell. That someone, always the optimist, was thinking of birds and their brood next year – nice!!

As we close out the year, many of you have made donations to our society to which I want to say a heart-felt thank you, it means an awful lot. These contributions which we depend on helped fund four youth groups through our Kids in Nature grants, our partnership with NCC to help at Asquith in a whole host of ways including producing an amazing wildflower pamphlet, our remarkable speaker series, advocating for wetlands here in Saskatchewan and much more – thank you so much!

And I hope many of you got out to help count birds on boxing day; this is a wonderful tradition right across North America that our Society participates in. The work is so important both in terms of conservation (stopping the old annual “Christmas Side Hunt,” where teams would compete to see who could shoot the most birds!) and in promoting citizen science. The job of knowing the world of birds is just too big to be left to a few keen amateurs and academics – we all need to pitch in; it all helps! We anxiously await the results of the count to see what’s new, and what the trends are. I may be going out on a limb but last year’s Christmas was brown – this year it’s all white!

Speaking of citizen science, I was just reading LeeAnn Latremouille’s update of the Saskatchewan’s Breeding Bird Atlas in the fall edition of BIRDWATCH Canada. Always interesting and thought provoking; what a lot of work by LeeAnn, the leadership folks and all the volunteers on the ground, looking for the birds that call Saskatchewan home to breed in! Great job! Thank you!!

Surprisingly, LeeAnn points out that neither the loud and boisterous, Black-billed Magpie or the Western Meadow Lark made the top 10 breeding species in Saskatchewan – What!?! The top species goes to the Red-winged Blackbird, very much part of Saskatchewan spring soundtrack; a bird we are all very familiar with! LeeAnn happily notes the top species for confirmed breeding in the most squares was the threatened Barn Swallow, perhaps due to their penchant for nesting on human structures. LeeAnn encourages us to check out the Sask Breeding Atlas at sk.birdatlas.ca – Great stuff!!

Kids in Nature grant applications are coming due very quickly – Jan 15th. If you know a group that may be interested, please give them a little nudge and point out our program. We think there is a lot going on out there in nature and we want kids being part of it! The link to the Kids in Nature grant is on our website: Kids in Nature!

I read with interest Nature Canada’s latest news release concerning their annual EKOS poll Canadians Want Parties to Prioritize Nature in Federal Election. This new poll says “that Canadians are united in their concern for nature, and that the inclusion of commitments to protect nature in election platforms is a potential vote-winner for all parties”.

The EKOS poll shows that seven in ten poll respondents said they are less likely to vote for a party that has no platform commitments to protect nature. A strong majority support platform promises to phase out government subsidies to companies that harm nature, and to fund new national parks. The poll also reveals strong support for corporate responsibility towards nature.
This is certainly a good news poll to end the year on – not all is bleak, and we have thoughtful neighbours!

With so many of us out and about in the snow these days, a natural good read is the new book by Pete Dunne The Courage of Birds and the Often Surprising Ways They Survive Winter. I found this a very intriguing topic as we are out looking for and counting birds. I find myself wondering why there are birds still here and how do they manage to survive; well, this book goes a long way to explain what we are now learning about how birds get by and why. I highly recommend Dunne’s new book in case you too have ever wondered what makes birds tick in the winter!

All the best in the New Year – I’m very much looking forward to the challenges and rewards of 2025!!
David Forbes
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