Goldfinch Gazette
The Newsletter of the Rockingham Bird Club
Volume XXXII
NOVEMBER MEETING
DATE: Thursday, November 2, 2006
TIME: 7:00 PM
PLACE: Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community - Rt. 42 North, Harrisonburg, VA
PROGRAM:
Tony Burgess, who is retired from the Smithsonian, will talk to us about the
Smithsonian's Biological Research Projects going on in the Panama Canal Zone. We will be
meeting for dinner at Simple Pleasures at 5:15 PM. Please call Kay Gibson by 3:00 PM the
day of the meeting if want to join the group.
Field Trips – Tom Mizell
Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge and the Delaware Coast -- Weekend of November 3-5
The Delaware coast is a place teeming with birds, especially majestic flocks of Snow Geese, a sight
to behold that often pulls our club back there for an autumn field trip. John Irvine will lead this year's
foray. Call him at 432-2335 if you did not sign up to go already and want to take part, or have any
questions.
We will bird our way over to Delaware on Friday the 3rd after meeting at Massanutten Presbyterian
Church parking lot (by the intersection of Rt. 33 and Va. 286, the corner of US 33 and Indian Trail
Road between Harrisonburg and Penn Laird) at 7:30 AM. Unless some rarity shows up that might
lead us in a different direction, our route will take us past the ponds east of Fredericksburg
that usually host waterfowl and raptors to view--a useful warm-up for Saturday's birding. Bypassing
the D.C. area by means of U.S. 301, we will cross the Bay Bridge near Annapolis and make our way
across the upper Delmarva Peninsula to Dover, Delaware, our base for the next two nights.
Our accommodations will be at the Holiday Inn Express, 1570 North DuPont Highway. The room
rate will be $109.00 plus 8% state tax per night. Breakfast is served beginning at 6:00 AM. Call 1-888-
755-1450 by no later than October 31 to reserve your room, stating that you are with the Rockingham
Bird Club. After that date the block of rooms will no longer be held and the rate rises to $119.00 plus
tax per night.
At 7:30 AM we are to meet Maurice Barnhill, our speaker at last month's meeting, at the welcome
center at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, which is only a short distance from Dover. He will
be our guide and mentor as we journey around the refuge and then make our way southward to good
birding spots along the coast. If it works out as on some previous visits, we will wind up about daylight's
end down at Indian River Inlet below Rehoboth Beach.
Sunday we will bird our way back home, arriving in late afternoon. Bring warm layered clothes and rain
gear as the weather can be adverse along the coast.