This virtual program is brought to you by Rogue Valley Audubon!!!!

Audubon’s Vaux’s Happening Project began in 2007 as a successful effort to save a school chimney that was one of only two well-known big number Vaux’s Swift roost sites in Washington State. This chimney is now recognized as a PIF Globally Significant Important Bird Area. The project quickly expanded into an attempt to locate, raise awareness of, and hopefully preserve the important roost sites used by this species all along their migratory path. The project has now documented over 200 roosting sites from the Yukon to Guatemala used by over 15 million swifts in the last 26 migrations. Of special interest to conservationists in southern Oregon is a large roost in Medford very much in need of preserving. We will discuss how to do that. Schwitters will also share images and information captured by the project’s chimney surveil-lance cameras, precision temperature recorders, and radio tracking transmitters.

Larry Schwitters earned a Master of Science degree from East Texas State University. He spent 30 years in the trenches of public education, mostly as a middle school science teacher and coach in the Renton, Wash. School District. After an early retirement, his first involvement with the avian Apodidae family was Black Swift field research for the American Bird Conservancy. His experiences in this endeavor were the subject of the cover story for the American Birding Association’s Winging It magazine. His last 13 years have focused on the smaller Vaux’s Swift. His efforts are covered in the Birder’s World featured article, “46 Minutes of WOW.” Recently published by Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of the World is the Vaux’s Swift species update that Schwitters and his grandson put together.

Zoom instructions: The February chapter meeting will be live on Zoom on Feb. 23. If you’re already signed up, you won’t need to sign up again. To sign up for the first time, attendees will need to register by Feb. 22 via a new mailing list created just for RVAS Zoom events. Click on this link (https://www.roguevalleyaudubon.org/zoom-signup/) to register. After you register, you will be sent an email with the Zoom link and again on the day of the event.

Please check your junk mail as the messages can end up there. Contact RVAS via the website if you don’t receive the link on the stated dates.