Our 2025–2026 program series will commence on September 22nd with a different perspective on birding. Our speaker this month will be Donna Posont, the Director of Birding by Ear and Beyond at the University of Michigan-Dearborn Environmental Interpretive Center. Her program expands the joys of birding and the outdoors to a specific audience, the blind and those with low vision. In the program, participants learn to recognize birds by sound, as well as also using the senses of hearing, touch, smell, and taste to experience nature and the environment. Participants also learn physical and behavioral characteristics of the birds to match with the birdsongs.
Donna has been blind since age eight, sixty years ago. She has retinitis pigmentosa which progressively diminishes vision. It is hereditary, as she has two sisters who are also blind. Before she had any skills to live life as a blind person, she got a degree in Social Work from West Liberty University. She never got over wanting to study science. When her five children were mostly grown, she went to the University of Michigan-Dearborn and asked them what she could study to learn about nature so that she could share it with others who were blind. She began working towards a degree in Environmental Studies with a Naturalist focus. During that time she started a monthly program of Birding by Ear for people who are blind. After graduation it progressed to Birding by Ear and Beyond, and they enjoy and embrace all kinds of life in the natural world. They still have monthly programs and weekend events where they learn all about birds as well as frogs, trees, and they even have a Butterfly Garden that they built themselves. Donna can now say that her dream came true and she is sharing nature with people who are blind along with their families and friends and especially her fourteen grandchildren.
We will be trying to set up a Birding by Ear field demonstration in the afternoon on the 22nd. Look for an email sometime in September as the details of time and location can be provided.
We hope you'll join us on Monday, September 22nd, at People's Church, 1758 North 10th Street, Kalamazoo. This program is geared to all audiences, and we enthusiastically invite families and nature lovers of any age to join us! Come at 6:30 PM (new time – half an hour earlier this year) for some refreshments and socializing. Snacks and beverages will be provided. It's helpful if you bring your own coffee cup. The one-hour program will start at 7:00 PM. Handicap parking and access is at either the front or the rear entrance of the building.
We will have a simultaneous Zoom link to the meeting for those who can’t make it or feel uncomfortable as yet to attend in person. This link will be available shortly before the meeting in the October newsletter that is emailed to you. We will also be recording the meeting for later viewing.
You may also like the following events from Audubon Society of Kalamazoo:
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