Dear CAS family,
We’re reaching out at the end of this difficult year with a look back and forward. We begin by offering condolences and compassion to those who have lost loved ones and livelihoods in this difficult year, and to those who are suffering from the loss of connections. And we offer our gratitude to all those who work to amplify the lessons we are learning in this moment and to build a more equitable world.
It seems a long time ago that we had to cancel our big annual event – Birding America – a few days before it was scheduled in March. Since then we have all adapted to the changed situation. Although the year went nothing like we had planned, we’re proud of our accomplishments and who we are as an organization. This year has strengthened our belief that birds and nature belong to everyone, and that local grassroots conservation groups play a critical role in protecting them. We’re delighted that so many of you agree and support us as members, by attending our events, by responding to our action alerts, and by signing up for our mailing list.
Something we’re looking forward to: 2021 is our 50th Anniversary! Although we are starting the year slowly, we are making plans for some in-person and online events to celebrate later in the year, after the virus is better-controlled.
Here are some 2020 highlights:
We shifted our programs to Zoom in March. We were able to feature a few of our Birding America speakers as well as others, founded the Patch Chat series with Chicago Ornithological Society, and moved our Compelling Voices series (another partnership effort) to online as well. John Elliott led our committee at first and has transitioned his responsibilities to our new program chair, Jen Johnson. Our staff person, Antonio Flores, advertises and helps plan our programs and oversees the technical aspects. Forrest Cortes, Radhika Miraglia and Mara Flores also helped with programs; altogether we offered 20 programs that were enjoyed by about 1000 viewers.
Our communications crew stepped up in a big way this year. Ably led by Judy Cheske, we added new voices and features. Our website gets as many as 500 visits a day, averaging about 100 – over 70,000 page views this year. Popular pages are our directory of Chicago-area Birding Hotspots, Upcoming Events and our news blog. We are delighted that two new writers have joined us – Miyako Pleines, Notes from a Casual Birder (often with Illustrations by her mother, L. Nisako Hakasihima), and Drew McPartlin, The Up and Up – and John Elliott’s column now has a name, The More You Know.
Our most popular Instagram posts of 2020
Our social media outlets grew, and are still growing, as people found birds a comfort. Our Facebook page now has over 4600 followers, and our posts reach up to 10,000 people. We also run a very active Facebook group with many posts each day. We’re proud that it’s a place where beginners feel comfortable asking questions and photographers generously share and enjoy photos.
Our Instagram account started last year and is popular. We have grown to 1488 followers. Most-liked posts included our Black Birders week post, “Shout out to the birds of my everyday epic” by board member Kim Ruffin, anything featuring Monty, Rose and kids, and owl etiquette. Successful Instagram campaigns include Sounds of Spring – bird song ID; Focus on Local Species of Concern by Grace Broderick (another great new addition to our team), and Ben Sanders’ Bird Quizzes. Lindsay Vacek now coordinates our IG account.
Who’s responsible for those peppy emails you get every week? Jessica Johnson does the writing and assembling, with backup from Antonio Flores, and Judy Cheske plans out the topics and keeps it all flowing. Our mailing list is over 1500, and 58% open our emails “often” – which is a great rate. Thank you!
Our bird walk strategy shifted to smaller trips with multiple leaders after the pandemic hit. We continue to focus on specific neighborhoods: McKinley Park, Riverdale, Albany Park, North Park Village, Jackson Park and Washington Park as well as our LGBTQ+ affinity space. This year we greatly increased our bilingual Spanish field trips in an effort led by Antonio Flores. Altogether we offered about 72 field trips while staying in line with the forced restrictions due to coronavirus. Antonio and other bilingual leaders also represented us at 7 partner events.
Racial equity has been an important focus for us since we developed our strategic plan. This was even more true after the events of the summer. We started a racial equity book club, are in the process of hiring a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice consultant to review our organization and advise us, and used our communications to express solidarity with Black Lives Matter and to share important developments such as local environmental justice issues, Black Birders Week events, and the Bird Names for Birds Campaign.
This year we had three local bird conservation projects
We were on the team that organized the Chicago Piping Plovers monitoring and naming effort. The names Esperanza, Nish and Hazel were chosen with the help of many partners.
Our shrubland habitat restoration at Camp Pine in Glenview continues under the able leadership of Ken Shaeffer and Alex Landberg. We held 7 of our monthly workdays; the others were cancelled.
We organized a Blitz of the Chicago River, and are currently co-leading an effort with Friends of the Chicago River to organize partners to develop recommendations for Chicago River habitat. Look for that plan this year – and also a Des Plaines River Blitz in conjunction with the Forest Preserves of Cook County.
Our advocacy for birds continues. We passed a Bird-Friendly Buildings Ordinance this year, but we still can’t say we crossed the finish line. The ordinance placed responsibility with the Department of Planning Sustainability checklist. We are working with the Department to develop final language for the checklist which will make these features mandatory for buildings which are required go through the checklist process.
Sarah Brotherton is the person who writes our action alerts about important advocacy issues – we’ve sent out 10 this year, featuring local environmental justice issues and local and national bird conservation issues.
Our active, talented board sets our vision and finds the resources to bring that vision to life. We bid farewell with gratitude to board members Pat Miller, Sayan Duttachoudhury, Dave Willard, Laurel Ross and Mara Flores, and welcomed Lisette Zaid, Alex Landberg, Jen Johnson and Laura Jean Bailey. Forrest Cortes became our new Vice President and Laura our new Treasurer. Our Program and Communications Manager, Antonio Flores, completed his first year as our sole staff person, and his perspective and work add a lot.
Our financial strategy is on track, amazingly, given the difficult year. We significantly upped our expenses by hiring a full-time staff member and have been working at increasing revenue accordingly. Our new store (an initiative by Judy Cheske); a bird seed sale with a new leader, Lynne Mecum; a membership drive led by Alex Landman and Lisette Zaid; a Giving Tuesday campaign and our annual appeal all helped us to meet our budget.
We enjoy the spirit of partnership and cooperation among the local environmental conservation community and are delighted to work with these organizations: Chicago Ornithological Society, Illinois Ornithological Society, North Park Village Nature Center, Peggy Notebaert Nature Center, Friends of the Forest Preserves, Environmentalists of Color, The Nature Conservancy, Chicago Park District, Forest Preserves of Cook County, Blacks in Green, University of Chicago Audubon, Eden Place, Openlands, Audubon Great Lakes, American Indian Center, Enlace Chicago.
As always, if you’d like to be more involved in any of this, please reach out!
We send our thanks for your support and look forward to seeing you in 20201 on a Zoom screen, an anniversary event – or out in the field! How great will that be!
Warm regards and good birding,
Judy Pollock