The humble bumble bee is one of the most recognizable and beloved pollinators in our ecosystem. They play a crucial role in facilitating the reproduction of many plant species. In this talk, we will explore the many species of bumble bees that live in the Lethbridge area, including tips for identifying different species. We will also dive into the findings of Jessenia's 2024 research project, which examined how environmental factors influence bumble bee presence and the potential for competition with managed honey bees. By understanding these interactions, we can better appreciate the many bumble bees that call Lethbridge home, and take simple steps to make our gardens more welcoming for our tiny neighbours, helping to support these vital pollinators in our own back yards.

The presentation will be held at the Helen Schuler Nature Centre community room, located in the Lethbridge river valley at the north end of Indian Battle Road South.

It is well-established that birds sing for territory defense and mate attraction. These functions alone, however, fail to account for several common features of bird song. My students and I try to understand why bird song is so interactive, diverse, and fast.

For the past decade, we have focused our research on the tropical songbird Adelaide’s warbler (Setophaga adelaidae). In this talk, I will describe Adelaide’s warbler’s song system, and walk through our recent discoveries in vocal interaction (duetting and countersinging), diversity (song type repertoires), and constrained performance.

The presentation will be held at the Helen Schuler Nature Centre community room, located in the Lethbridge river valley at the north end of Indian Battle Road South.

The Ruffed Grouse is often considered a well studied species because it is both relatively common and intensively managed across many parts of its broad distribution. However, many basic questions of Ruffed Grouse behavior have remained largely unexplored. Dr. Iwaniuk will provide an overview of how we have attempted to answer some of these questions, what we have learned about Ruffed Grouse over the past 15 years, and the challenges of working on this common but sometimes frustrating species.

The presentation will be held at the Helen Schuler Nature Centre community room, located in the Lethbridge river valley at the north end of Indian Battle Road South.

Land cover change is the largest direct driver of global biodiversity loss, but often the relationships between the biophysical characteristics of landscapes and species occurrence are unknown. Therefore, for effective biodiversity conservation, tools are required to quantify the relationships between land cover change and probability of species occurrence.

As part of this project, we used the best available data on species occurrence, climate, landscape characteristics, and land use, to predict the probability of occurrence of 329 terrestrial vertebrate species at the quarter section scale across Prairie Canada. Combining models across species allows depiction of biodiversity potential in the form of biodiversity 'maps' for all, or subsets of species (e.g. amphibians, birds, species at risk). Because models specifically incorporate the magnitude of effect for land use change on each species, predictions of how landscape change (positive or negative) will potentially impact biodiversity are possible. This mapping effort can be used to target areas for conserving and restoring habitats, and to predict biodiversity response to landscape change and conservation effort.

Our results highlighted the importance of retaining natural habitats, including wetlands, grasslands, and forests within agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity.

The presentation will be held at the Helen Schuler Nature Centre community room, located in the Lethbridge river valley at the north end of Indian Battle Road South.

“Prior to the turn of the 20th century, people engaged in a holiday tradition known as the Christmas “Side Hunt”. They would choose sides and go afield with their guns; whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered (and furred) quarry won. Conservation was in its beginning stages around that era and many observers and scientists were becoming concerned about declining bird populations. Beginning on Christmas Day 1900, ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, an early officer in the Audubon Society proposed a new holiday tradition – a “Christmas Bird Census” – that would count birds during the holidays rather than hunt them. So began the Christmas Bird Count.”

Source:  www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count 

This year is the 125th annual Christmas Bird Count in North America. Records show that volunteers and bird enthusiasts have participated in the count since 2010. Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) are conducted between December 14th and January 5th each year. Each count takes place in the same established 24 km. (15 mile) wide diameter circle every year. The center of the circle for the Milk River count is the Junction of Hwy. 4 and Hwy. 501. CBCs are a very important part of Citizen Science. Milk River’s CBC is on Saturday, January 4, 2025. New participants are always welcome. If you are interested you can contact the coordinator Ken Orich at korich@telusplanet.net .

Ken must know if you are interested no later than Friday, December 27, 2024.

“Prior to the turn of the 20th century, people engaged in a holiday tradition known as the Christmas “Side Hunt”. They would choose sides and go afield with their guns; whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered (and furred) quarry won. Conservation was in its beginning stages around that era and many observers and scientists were becoming concerned about declining bird populations. Beginning on Christmas Day 1900, ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, an early officer in the Audubon Society proposed a new holiday tradition – a “Christmas Bird Census” – that would count birds during the holidays rather than hunt them. So began the Christmas Bird Count.”

Source:  www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count 

This year is the 125th annual Christmas Bird Count in North America. Records show that Lethbridge volunteers and bird enthusiasts have participated in the count since at least 1983. Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) are conducted between December 14th and January 5th each year. Each count takes place in the same established 24 km. (15 mile) wide diameter circle every year. The center of the circle for Lethbridge is the old water tower on Mayor Magrath Drive and 3rd. Ave. south. CBCs are a very important part of Citizen Science. Lethbridge’s CBC is on Saturday, December 14th  this year. New participants are always welcome. If you are interested you can contact the coordinator Ken Orich at korich@telusplanet.net .

Ken must know if you are interested no later than Wednesday, December 11th.

NATURE LETHBRIDGE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING AGENDA

8:00 PM Wednesday, November 13, 2024

1. Call to Order
   

2. Approval of the Agenda
   

3. Approval of the Minutes of the 2023 Annual General Meeting
   

4. Reports of Officers:
   a. President’s Report
   b. Treasurer’s Report
   

5. New Business
   a. Election of Officers 2024/2025
   b. Appointment of Auditors 2024/2025
   

6. Business Arising
     

7. Adjournment

The presentation will be held at the Helen Schuler Nature Centre community room, located in the Lethbridge river valley at the north end of Indian Battle Road South.

'Tis the season for Snow Goose migration!

Join us as we head out in search of large Snow Goose flocks south and east of Lethbridge. Flocks numbering in the thousands or tens of thousands are possible, and they are among the greatest avian spectacles Alberta has to offer! Of course, we hope to see birds other than Snow Geese as well.

Meet in northwest corner of south side Fairway Plaza Safeway parking lot 8:00 am.

Leaders: David Scott (ds1908@live.ca), and Ken Orich (korich@telusplanet.net).

People benefit a lot by getting out into provincial and national parks to enjoy nature. Lucky for us, those parks are criss-crossed by roads and trails that help us access our favourite spots. But these roads and trails can also affect the plant and animal species that live in wilderness areas. In this talk, Jenny will tell us about a study she and her students did to test how roads and trails affect plants in the Castle Provincial Parks here in southern Alberta. They learned that the impact of trails on plants depends a lot on the type of trail use, and the vegetation type the trail crosses. They also showed that exotic plants tend to turn up at higher elevations near off-highway vehicle trails. Trails are important for accessing and appreciating nature, but it is worthwhile to consider their impacts on the wild species we are hoping to protect.

The presentation will be held at the Helen Schuler Nature Centre community room, located in the Lethbridge river valley at the north end of Indian Battle Road South.

• Meet at the Baroness Picnic Shelter in Indian Battle Park 5:00 pm.

• Details will be in the first fall newsletter.

• Meet in northwest corner of south side Fairway Plaza Safeway parking lot 8:00 am, or at MD of Taber Park 8:45 am.

• Leaders: Lloyd Bennett (loydyoli@gmail.com), ph 403-223-0456, and David Scott (ds1908@live.ca).

• Meet in Botterill Bottom Park parking lot 7:00 pm.

• Leader: Gordon Butt.

• Directions to meeting place – turn south at traffic light on corner of Scenic Drive & 20th Street South, proceed south on Tudor Crescent 2 blocks to Tudor Blvd, turn right (west). This angles back north and dead ends at a turn-around parking area.

• Meet here 7:00 pm.

• Leaders: Norine Ambrose (nambrose@cowsandfish.org), and Graeme Greenlee (pgreenlee@telus.net), ph 403-328-8977.

• Meet in southeast corner of west side Safeway parking lot 7:30 am.

• Leaders: Graeme Greenlee (pgreenlee@telus.net), ph 403-328-8977.

• Meet in northwest corner of south side Fairway Plaza Safeway parking lot 8:00 am.

• Leaders: Joanne Reid (joannemreid@gmail.com), and Graeme Greenlee (pgreenlee@telus.net), ph 403-328-8977.

• Meet in parking lot 7:00 pm.

• Leaders: David Scott (ds1908@live.ca), and Graeme Greenlee (pgreenlee@telus.net), ph 403-328-8977.

• Meet in northwest corner of south side Fairway Plaza Safeway parking lot 6:30 pm

• Directions: south on Hwy 5 to Twp Rd 70  (approximately 16 km), turn left (east) and go 5 km to concrete bridge, cross the bridge, turn right (south) and go ½ km, turn left (east) into the farm yard of Rory Russell and Rhiann Thomas

• Leaders: Graeme & Pat Greenlee (pgreenlee@telus.net), ph 403-328-8977

• Directions to meeting place: turn south at traffic light on corner of Scenic Drive & 20 Street South, proceed south on Tudor Crescent 2 blocks to Tudor Blvd, turn right (west). This angles back north and dead ends at a turn-around parking area.
  Meet here 7:00 pm.

• Leaders: Graeme and Pat Greenlee (pgreenlee@telus.net), ph 403-328-8977

• Meet in parking lot 7:00 pm.

• Leaders: David Scott (ds1908@live.ca) and Penny Hopkins (phopkins@live.ca)

• Meet in the northwest corner parking lot by the pool, @ 7:00 pm.

• Leaders: Penny Hopkins (phopkins@live.com) and Claudia Burstlein (Cburstlein@gmail.com).

This presentation provides a basic understanding of what the impacts are, how producers can identify the risks, and what sustainable agricultural systems (ag) provides, of what the impacts are, how producers can identify the risks, and what sustainable ag systems are.

These days the buzz phrase “regenerative agriculture” is being used a lot.
The presenter will attempt to describe what regenerative vs organic vs conventional ag systems are and how they differ.

The presentation will be held at the Helen Schuler Nature Centre community room, located in the Lethbridge river valley at the north end of Indian Battle Road South.

Unfortunately, we are not able to offer an online version of the presentation - sorry for the inconvenience!