Florida is well known as a “destination.” Snowbirds – both human and avian -- head this way to escape northern winters. Retirees head this way for our climate, beaches, and other attractions. College kids on spring break head for Florida and have become a sought after economic resource. Tourists from around the world head to Florida for many reasons. We certainly have one of the largest “migrant” human populations in North America and among them are a lot of birders and potential birders. Indeed, most of us are from somewhere other than Florida. For most of our human migrants, leisure time activities are high on the agenda. While “birds” may rank behind “beaches,” they also come with the beaches and our shorebirds and waders within their wetland and beach habitats are among the best and most frequent “icons” for Florida tourism. As the Florida organization with its primary focus on birds, we might do well to target these human migrants with information about Florida birds – their beauty, their behavior, their history, their interactions with people and Florida environments, and their conservation needs.

As FOS president, I want to keep our focus balanced – reaching out to and encouraging interaction among birders, professional ornithologists, students, and the greater public from which we can recruit new birders and encourage effective conservation. FOS outreach has endless possibilities associated with this migrant human population and I would like to have some volunteers interested in joining with me to explore these. I also want us to think about “in-reach” – how can we better serve the members we already have. The following are a few ideas resulting from personal brainstorming with my wife, Bette. What do you think of these? What ideas do you have for ratcheting up our effectiveness at championing Florida birds and enhancing and serving our membership? What is feasible? What is desirable? What are the benefits to be reaped? What problems need to be overcome? All of these will require effort and time, but hold some potential for a renewed, dynamic FOS. There are little jobs and big jobs. What are you willing to do for FOS?

      Florida Birding Festivals.--Florida’s avifauna is celebrated each year by several local birding festivals and these are growing each year. This is in part, of course, because Florida is a destination for birds too. We as an organization should be supporting these festivals, and should be using them as outreach opportunities – first to provide needed education about Florida birds, their conservation needs, and Florida birding opportunities, and second as fertile grounds for recruiting FOS members so that we can expand and strengthen our outreach, conservation, and research efforts.     On the labor-intensive side, we should have a prominent manned display at Florida birding festivals focusing on FOS sponsored field trips, our local bird conservation needs and efforts, our support for classroom and research efforts, and our publications. To be effective this would require an attractive display and members willing to be available to help at the display. Any volunteers to help us create an FOS presence at a birding festival?

      Perhaps we could add a link for Florida birding festivals to the list on the left side of the opening page of our web-site. To do this we need someone willing to take on the task of gathering information about the festivals, organizing that information in a brief informative way, and getting the web-links to each festival forwarded to our webmaster for posting on the FOS site. Perhaps in return we might get links to the FOS web site added to the festival web sites.

      FOS meetings.—If we could get the basic information about FOS meetings prepared three to four  months in advance, perhaps we could entice more non-FOS birders to join us if we sent the notice for inclusion in local Audubon newsletters. Similarly we might entice members from neighboring states if we sent the information early to the editors of nearby state ornithological society newsletters. Perhaps it would even be worth sending meeting information to the editors of ornithological societies in states that typically send a lot of “snowbirds” our way ... such as Michigan or Massachusetts and their neighboring states.

      Spring break. While the traditional spring break is thought of as a time college kids come to the state for partying, there are also a lot of families that come when their kids are out of school. And who knows, maybe some of the spring break college crowd have some interest in birds. Is there anyone interested in developing material for our web-site that would suggest spring-break birding sites, festivals, programs, and other bird-related activities for visiting spring breakers? By merely having the words “Florida spring break” on the site, my guess is we might get a lot of hits … and who knows, perhaps some new members.

      Reaching out for collaborations with other organizations.—While collaborative meetings and activities with adjacent state ornithological societies are always productive, we also have other organizations within the state that have a focus on birds. Perhaps collaborations with some of those might be profitable for our membership and theirs. For example, Florida Wildlife Rehabilitators Association and Florida Chapter Wildlife Society members have strong interests in native birds and their members have much to offer us in terms of their knowledge of Florida bird populations. The Wildlife Society, the international organization to which our Florida Wildlife Society is affiliated, will be holding its annual meeting in Miami during November 2008. I’m sure several FOS members will be attending, but we could also have an FOS presence in terms of a table with birding suggestions, copies of our publications for sale, and membership applications.

I’ll stop for now and continue in future newsletters. Send me your suggestions for ways in which we can make a better FOS for all. I’ll end with the thought that migrant birds also have Florida as a destination, but except for many of the nearly three dozen exotic species found in Florida, and perhaps a micro-managed endangered species or two, most of the birds that frequent Florida are here in spite of human actions, not because of them. The Florida Ornithological Society has much to gain from all of these movements ... and much to think about as a result of them.

Please share your ideas for the future of FOS and let me know how you would like to help.

Contact me at:  jjackson@fgcu.edu  or  Department of Marine and Ecological Sciences, Whitaker Hall, Florida Gulf Coast University, 10501 FGCU Boulevard South, Ft. Myers, FL 33965