Author Archives: AWOlivieri

Wilson Garden 50th Anniversary

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Member-volunteers will be on hand to help celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Robert and Catherine Wilson Botanical Garden on Friday and Saturday, May 4-5. We will be in charge of children’s games art table and crafts outside of the dining room on the terrace. Please stop by and say ‘Hola’!

2012 Annual Meeting

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Held on February 4 at Las Cascadas Restaurant near the Wilson Botanical Garden from noon to about 2:30pm, the Annual Meeting of the San Vito Bird Club for 2012 was attended by 30 members—an all-time high turnout!

Alison Olivieri & Harry Hull applauding something... (Photo: Olivieri)

Business transacted during the formal part of the meeting included approval of a revised version of the Bylaws and election of a new slate of Executive Committee members for the year as follows: Alison Olivieri, President; Kate Desvenain, Vice President; Lydia Vogt, Secretary, and Fred Schroeder, Treasurer.

Alison Olivieri then made a Special Presentation to the retiring Vice President, Julie Girard, who has served tirelessly and enthusiastically since the Club was founded in 2006—a gift of a tile-framed mirror wrapped in custom-printed paper handmade by member Gail Hull.

Julie Girard receiving gift from Alison Olivieri. (Photo: Olivieri)

At the conclusion of the formal business portion of the meeting, attendees were treated to two slide-shows: a presentation by the new Vice President, Kate Desvenain, about her trip to a Bird Banding Workshop in a remote region of Peru called Madre de Dios in November 2011; and a preview of this website by Communications Committee chairman, Harry Hull.

Lunch at the meeting was delicious, thanks to the entire Las Cascadas crew led by George Alcott; and we were all delighted to welcome the youngest “junior member” of the San Vito Bird Club, Mikaela Esquivel Chinchilla, daughter of Heysen Esquivel and Nancy Chinchilla Rosales!

Heysen, Nancy and young Mikaela Esquivel. (Photo: Olivieri)

Mist Netting Highlights: January 2012 session

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Three new species were captured during the week: Gray-chested Dove (at Finca Cantaros), Violet-crowned Woodnymph and Spotted Woodcreeper (both at Finca Sofia)! We are always excited to have a “first” capture so to have three in one session was a thrill.

We found three banded birds that we record as “foreign recaptures”. This means they were banded by another research team that uses different sites and different band numbers. It is always fascinating to catch “someone else’s” bird and much can be learned from these data points. Of course, we will submit the records to see where the birds were originally banded.

The first was a Green Hermit that we know was originally banded by Stanford University researchers as a juvenile in March of 2011 because this was the second time we have caught it! The Stanford team captured this individual in Melissa’s Meadow, an area across the Rio Java in the Las Cruces forest that has served as a reforestation study site for many years. We caught it for the first time on November 27, 2011 at Finca Cantaros and again on January 22, 2012 at the same site. We feel now that this bird (band #A55817) is an old friend and we look forward to seeing it again!

The second foreign recapture was another hummingbird — a Snowy-bellied Hummingbird — with the band #A48431, netted on January 24 at Finca Sofia.

Finally, we caught an Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush with the band code CSIB1616, at Finca Corteza on January 27, 2012.

At this session we welcomed participants new and old, including a group from Connecticut Audubon Society Birdcraft Museum: Faithful-Returner Judy Richardson and Somewhat-Less-Faithful-But-Nonetheless-A-Returner Patty Scott, plus a new bander, Julian Sproule. Judy runs the banding station at Birdcraft (the oldest, continually-run banding station in the state) and Patty and Julian are among her crew there.

Finally, I am happy to report our Principal Investigator Dr. Steve Latta of the National Aviary attended this session as did our supporters and trainers from San Jose, Juan Pablo Elizondo and Jorge Leiton. Steve has started working closely with us on compiling data that will be used to write several papers about the project. Needless to say, we are eager to help him accomplish this!