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A Family of Stewards: National Audubon Society's Response to the Gulf Oil Spill | National Audubon Society

A Family of Stewards: National Audubon Society's Response to the Gulf Oil Spill | National Audubon Society

Sept. 16, 2012, Joe Neal report from Lake Atalanta in Rogers, AR

[Lake Atalanta, Rogers, Arkansas, September 16, 2012]Best Bird category for the Northwest Arkansas Audubon Society sponsored field trip to Lake Atalanta in Rogers: Philadelphia Vireo (2), Swainson's Thrush (2), lots of well-seen Wilson's Warblers and White-eyed Vireos.

Best Native Flower category: big blue lobelias along Frisco Spring and masses of yellow false foxglove in the woods. Could also add: Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (8) working long colorful tubes of orangish jewelweed along the spring and a flock of Indigo Buntings, molted down to a few patches of heavy blue and warm browns of fading summer.

The exclusive and much sought after Came On Bicycle Award goes to Adam Schaffer who pedaled from Bentonville, binoculars around neck. He shares his ornithological expertise in summer at Arkansas Audubon Society's Halberg ecology camp and Ozark Natural Science Center.

Seeing Adam arrive, I felt my world enlarged. It seems there's a path ahead for pedaling to a birding trip, commuting in a hybrid or car pool, turning on wind and solar. I don't mean to besmirch coal, natural gas, nuclear. As they say in foreign policy, everything is necessarily on the table.

Lake Atalanta features an accessible mostly paved walk to the lake edge, long home to resident barnyard geese and ducks, plus injured Snow Geese (white and blue) and a Ross's Goose. For the nerdy ornithologist-within, that Snow "grin patch" is directly compared with similar-looking but smaller Ross's, with no grin.

While pointing this out to newer birders, we catch sight of immaculate male Wood Ducks. At distance: shimmering field of green and russet, white accents, radiating red eye, standing on limbs fallen in the water, across the lake.

[Lake Atalanta, Rogers, Arkansas, September 16, 2012]Best Bird category for the Northwest Arkansas Audubon Society sponsored field trip to Lake Atalanta in Rogers: Philadelphia Vireo (2), Swainson's Thrush (2), lots of well-seen Wilson's Warblers and White-eyed Vireos.

Best Native Flower category: big blue lobelias along Frisco Spring and masses of yellow false foxglove in the woods. Could also add: Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (8) working long colorful tubes of orangish jewelweed along the spring and a flock of Indigo Buntings, molted down to a few patches of heavy blue and warm browns of fading summer.

The exclusive and much sought after Came On Bicycle Award goes to Adam Schaffer who pedaled from Bentonville, binoculars around neck. He shares his ornithological expertise in summer at Arkansas Audubon Society's Halberg ecology camp and Ozark Natural Science Center.

Seeing Adam arrive, I felt my world enlarged. It seems there's a path ahead for pedaling to a birding trip, commuting in a hybrid or car pool, turning on wind and solar. I don't mean to besmirch coal, natural gas, nuclear. As they say in foreign policy, everything is necessarily on the table.

Lake Atalanta features an accessible mostly paved walk to the lake edge, long home to resident barnyard geese and ducks, plus injured Snow Geese (white and blue) and a Ross's Goose. For the nerdy ornithologist-within, that Snow "grin patch" is directly compared with similar-looking but smaller Ross's, with no grin.

While pointing this out to newer birders, we catch sight of immaculate male Wood Ducks. At distance: shimmering field of green and russet, white accents, radiating red eye, standing on limbs fallen in the water, across the lake.