MIDDLEBURY — Otter Creek Audubon Society will hold its annual dinner and meeting on Thursday, Nov. 13, from 5:30-8:45 p.m. at the American Legion in Middlebury. The keynote speaker will be Rosalind “Roz” Renfrew, conservation biologist with the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, editor of the second Vermont Breeding Bird Atlas, and author of several publications summarizing aspects of her research on bobolink distribution and migration between Vermont and Argentina and Bolivia. The title of her talk is “The Double Life of Bobolinks.”
Renfrew followed her B.S. in wildlife biology at the University of Vermont with an M.S. and Ph.D. in wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she studied grassland birds in agro-ecosystems. She never lost her strong affinity for grassland birds, returning to Vermont in 2002 to direct the Breeding Bird Atlas and researching the migration and wintering ecology of bobolinks. She is developing a full life-cycle Bobolink Conservation Plan, bringing together biologists from Canada to Argentina to conserve grassland birds throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Reservations are needed for dinner at 6 p.m. There is no fee for the talk at 7:15 p.m. The American Legion is at 49 Wilson Road off Boardman Street behind G. Stone Motors south of Middlebury on Route 7. Call Sue Rasmussen at 897-5411 for reservations. OCAS members will receive a separate invitation by mail.