San Fernando Valley
Annual Awards Banquet

Friday, March 7, 2008

Airtel Plaza Hotel 7277 Valjean Avenue, Van Nuys

6:00 p.m. No host bar 7:00 p.m. Dinner

2008 Conservation Award Recipient: Jim Hardesty

Featured Speaker: Stephen Shunk

Check your copy of the Phainopepla for a copy of the reservation form
or find it here.

Reservations (required) due by February 28, 2008.

For further information call
Jeanne Polak-Recht, Chairperson, at (818) 360-1438.

Featured Speaker: Stephen Shunk, naturalist, photographer, and founder of Paradise Birding, to speak on “Woodpecker Wonderland”

Stephen will describe how in 2002, a group of local birders began a quest to study a small spring–fed basin nestled in a classic storybook forest. This closed canopy of giant pine and aspen trees sheltered an open, grassy, understory that provided shelter and habitat for woodpeckers. Steve’s presentation will feature how, in the spring and summer of 2003 the East Cascades Bird Conservancy began formal studies of the woodpecker populations between central Oregon’s high Desert and the East Cascades, where large fires in the region had left a mosaic of burns through widely varying forest types. We will learn about the discovery of eleven of Oregon’s twelve breeding woodpecker species nesting here within a few miles of each other, a concentration that may be unprecedented in North America. They called this area “Woodpecker Wonderland.” This program will provide us with a fascinating up-close look at these woodpeckers. Mr. Shunk is now writing the chapter on woodpeckers for the Peterson Guide.