President’s Spring Report

Another spring is here, evidenced by the recent arrival of the familiar American robin. We also know of course it's spring in the countryside, with the stunning flash of the beautiful mountain bluebird. There were early sightings this year in the foothills in mid-March.

Spring is a wonderful time of year as it brings us hope for the future and the anticipation of new things and a reminder of old familiar things. This could not be more true this year. We were all eagerly looking forward to spring and some distraction from this never-ending pandemic.

Those familiar things we look forward to are the readying of our boxes and sharing in the experiences of another wonderful bluebird nesting season.

I plan to have my Trail Orientation Day again this year on Saturday, June 5, on my trail just west of Lethbridge. This is a great opportunity for all birders, newcomers and those interested in having their own trail, to experience what an active trail looks like. Please refer to our website for further details. This half-day event, like last year, will be conducted respecting the health guidelines at that time.

Joe Michielsen is working on getting our monitoring permit from the government for this year and will forward the permit to the monitors when received. In the meantime use last year's permit.

Again a big thank you to our Trail Master, Steven Shumborski, for tracking down old abandoned trails, repairing, replacing or moving boxes as needed. If you are aware of an abandoned trail in southern Alberta, please contact Steven at sshumborski [at] gmail [dot com].

We hosted for the first time last month our 2020 annual general meeting on line via Zoom. It went very well and gave us all a chance to 'meet' some new members and hear what was happening on their trails. We look forward to having our 2021 AGM in person this year.

As a society we continue to be thankful and impressed with the expertise and efforts of our new Web Master, Curtis Goodman, and all that he does to maintain our website. We have had inquiries to the site from all over Alberta. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, go to bluebirdtrails.org.

If you need new boxes, we have some available. Contact Ken Mackintosh at kejemack [at] hotmail [dot com].

A big shout out and thank you to Jim Penny and Jack Sherman. They are a couple of retired local fellows who wanted to support the society and keep busy and they sure did, by building 100 boxes during their downtime this past winter.

Also a big thank you to Del Peters from Saskatoon, who is retired and was also seeking a project. Del built 25 boxes and hand delivered them to us.

We as an organization are always greatly appreciative when folks volunteer like this. It inspires us to continue to do what we do.

Enjoy the season and the satisfaction that comes from working together to support the beautiful mountain bluebird.