This is a joint program with Piedmont Bird Club. 

Program Description: What do White Pelicans, Barred Owls, Bachman Sparrows and Gray-headed Swamphens have in common?  Dr. Marsh will share the stories of 10 species of birds that have responded to the changing North American landscape during the past 150 years.  The characters in these stories include the good, the bad, the comical, and the finicky.

Speaker Bio: Chris Marsh grew up in Raleigh, NC where he was active in the Raleigh Bird Club and Carolina Bird Club. After earning a B.S. degree in Zoology at NC.State, he earned his doctorate at Oregon State University where his research focused on shorebirds as intertidal predators along rocky shores.  After a 2-year stint teaching at Brevard College, he was a professor at Coastal Carolina University in Conway SC from 1984-1998. Here, he collaborated with the S.C. Dept of Natural Resources conducting shorebird surveys at Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge and later served as one of the 13 regional directors of an National Science Foundation grant that worked to improve math and science education in public schools. From 1998 to 2022 he was the Executive Director of the Spring Island Trust, an environmental non-profit located in Beaufort (B-YOU-FORD) County, SC. During his tenure there he helped cofound the S.C. Master Naturalist Program and the Port Royal Sound Foundation.

Soon after his retirement Chris and Barbara, his wife for almost 50 years, moved to Winston-Salem in 2022. Currently, he is on the Forsyth Audubon Board and is one of the co-instructors for the Northwest Piedmont Master Naturalist Program.

As with all our programs, this one is free and open to the public. Program begins at 7PM but come a little early and socialize with us.