Save The Dates-Upcoming Owl Talks

Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The first half of the year is off to a busy start with a couple of owl talks next week and two more before June.  I gave seven owl talks last year and with the talk I gave in January, I will have given five before the year is at the half way mark. If you know of an organization, school, book club, business, crime syndicate, etc; that you think would be interested in a talk, please feel free to recommend me to them.  Thank you!

Next week's first talk is for Missouri Nature & Environmental Photographers (MoNEP) on Tuesday, March 19 from 6:00-8:00pm at The Ethical Society in Ladue.  A map and directions are available here.  I was quite chuffed to hear when MoNEP contacted me that my name had come up several times as a potential speaker. As this is prominent group of photographers whose speakers are frequently highly distinguished photographers, I stressed to them that I am not a photographer but a naturalist who takes pictures and video. Happily they understood my perspective and are keen to hear about my work with the owls as well as my tips and insight on how to photograph owls and other wildlife in a responsible and ethical manner.

The second talk for next week is my first out-of-town talk.  I am honored to be addressing the East Ozarks Audubon Society on Thursday, March 21 from 7:00-8:00pm at Farmington Methodist Church in Farmington, Missouri. They kindly invited me to speak to them after reading about my work in the MO-Bird e-mail listserv.  This will be my first to Farmington, the county seat of St. Francois County. While Farmington is only about seventy miles away from St. Louis, I am thrilled to be taking the show on the road.

As some of you know I gave a talk at the Maplewood Public Library in nearby Maplewood, MO in January.  The talk was a success and with sixty-five people in attendance it was the largest audience the library had ever had for a lecture! It was great to see so many owl friends, addicts, and mentees in the audience and to meet and help create new ones.  The library generously allowed me to film the lecture and post it on my YouTube page as you can see below.  



The talk was such a success that the library has asked me to do a series of talks focusing on specific aspects of the owls' lives.  The first of these talks will be again at the Maplewood Public Library on Thursday, April 25 from 7:00-8:00m.  This talk is called "Forest Park Owls: Nesting and Owlets" and as the title indicates it will be the owls' nesting behavior and their offspring, the ever delightful owlets. Here are links to the library's FAQ with directions to the library (it is both easy and tricky to get there!) and a brochure for the talk itself. 

I have another talk in May but I will save that for a future post.  Thank you for reading and I hope to see you at one of these talks!