<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:10pt"><div style="font-weight: bold;"><span>The 300 Committee Land Trust’s 2012 Spring Speaker Series</span></div><div><span> Talks are free and open to the public. </span><span>Please join us! </span><br><span><br></span></div><div>Best, <br></div><div><br></div><div>Anne-Marie Runfola and Susie Goodman Hallstein<br></div><div>Outreach Committee Chairs</div><div>The 300 Committee</div><div><br></div><div>http://www.300committee.org/<br></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><br><span></span></div><div><span>Thursday, March 15th</span></div><div><span></span><span>Kestrels and Cranberries (Joanne Mason)<br>7:00 pm at Highfield Hall<br>Joanne “Joey” Mason got hooked on watching birds of prey 30 years ago. Since then, she has spent time in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Colorado, learning about falcon behavior and how to band
raptors; today she is routinely consulted about suitable placement of osprey nesting platforms. With the help of Mike Maurer in 1989 she initiated a nest box project for American Kestrels in southeastern Massachusetts on cranberry grower-owned properties. In 2000, she spearheaded the Raptor Retrofit Project to prevent osprey electrocutions on cranberry grower properties. Her newest project focuses on developing better management practices to protect raptors at landfills. Please join us as Joey shares her extensive research and experiences with American Kestrels, highlighting details about the birds’ feeding and habitat, plus descriptions of her nest box monitoring and what she has found in them through the years (including things that were not kestrels). Joey will offer insight and speculation about why these small falcons are in a rapid population decline. Her presentation will include a live male Merlin, a falcon similar in size to a Kestrel.
Don’t miss this exciting talk!<br></span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><span>Friday, March 30th<br></span></div><div><span>The Honeybee Democracy (Thomas Seely, Ph.D.)<br>7:30 pm at Falmouth High School (co-sponsored by the MBL)<br>Dr. Thomas D. Seeley is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University, where he teaches courses in animal behavior and does research on the functional organization of honey bee colonies. In recognition of his scientific work, he has received the Senior Scientist Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His interest in bees began in high school; ever since, he has been probing the inner workings of the honey bee colony. His talk will examine swarm intelligence in a natural system that has evolved this ability—a swarm of honey bees solving the life-or-death problem
of finding a new home. Using a process that includes collective fact-finding, open sharing of information, vigorous debating, and fair voting by the hundreds of bees in a swarm that function as nest-site scouts, honey bees accomplish amazing things. Tom Seeley will show how these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to achieving collective wisdom and effective group decision making. Make sure this talk is on your calendar!<br></span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><span>Friday, April 6th</span></div><div><span>Birds of Cape Cod & Beyond (Vern Laux)<br>7:30 pm at Falmouth High School<br>E. Vernon Laux, long-time newspaper columnist, author, tour guide, radio commentator, and bird watcher extraordinaire, will present a talk and slide show that draw on his extensive bird watching experience to show us birds both familiar and unusual. Vern has watched birds all over the world: the tropics, Antarctica, and Martha’s Vineyard,
where he discovered the famous Red-footed Falcon several summers ago. He is the resident land manager and ornithologist for the Linda Loring Nature Center on Nantucket and the author of Bird News—Vagrants and Visitors on a Peculiar Island. He appears regularly on WCAI’s The Point with Mindy Todd and his birding column appears every Saturday in The Cape Cod Times. Bring your bird questions!<br></span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><span>The 300 Committee is a private, non-profit land trust dedicated to preserving and protecting natural lands in Falmouth, Massachusetts.<br>The 300 Committee Land Trust • 157 Locust Street • Falmouth, MA 02540 </span><br></div><div><br></div><div>http://www.300committee.org/</div><div><br></div> </div></body></html>