Monthly Membership Meeting & Lecture

Tuesday, November 1, 7:00 pm

“Birds of India: Okhla Bird Sanctuary, Delhi” by Ben Kolstad, Ph.D., Florida Master Naturalist.

Ben Kolstad grew up in Southern California, earning a BA from UC Santa Barbara and MA and PhD from UCLA. He remembers, “Having gone to school on the beach for years, I figured it would not be much of a shock when my wife and I moved to south Florida about 10 years ago. Boy, was I wrong! Everything, but everything, is different. The air is different (wetter). The sky is different (lower). The land is different (flatter). About the only thing that was the same was the night-time sky, and even that felt strange.”

Eager to learn more about this flat wet land of Southern Florida, Ben went through the UF/IFAS Master Naturalist program and is now a certified Florida Master Naturalist. In Florida, he pursued a career in the publishing services industry. “Over the past decade, I’ve been to India on business a dozen times, and I always packed binoculars and a camera. After a few trips, and thousands of terrible photos, I started to learn the birds of New Delhi. What surprised me the most about the birds in India is not only how many of them are different but also how many of them are similar, or even the same.”  The evening’s lecture and slide show will bring us fascinating insights about these birds of India.

Also at the meeting, our expert Clive Pinnock will tell us more about the October Bird of the Month, Spotted Sandpiper, and the November BOM, Killdeer.

Doors open at 6:30 pm for light refreshments in rooms 101 and 102 at FAU Pine Jog Environmental Education Center, 6301 Summit Blvd (near Jog Road) in West Palm Beach. Meeting is free and open to the public.