Greetings fellow members and anyone reading this newsletter interested in birds, or as crazy about their flocks as many of us are.

I welcome in a New Year, and a new board to The Alaska Bird Club. Some of these names will be familiar to you, others we will absolutely enjoy getting to know.

The following people were either the slowest people in the room when nominations occurred, or raised their hands and told Leanna, who is now our President Emeritus, they would consider accepting nominations if their names were put forward:

We have our dedicated and wonderful Adopt-A-Bird director, Cindy Welbourne and our Hospitality member, Marta Muth; who also works at operating the fund raising table at monthly meetings or other special events.

We are looking for a Publications Director. This person is the one who helps directly edit the newsletter and proofs any advertisements before sending them forward to the editor. Oh, there are always the unwritten duties and responsibilities as there are with any volunteer job, and I know everyone will thank Jennifer S. for her many years as editor and director positions she has held with TABC. She would like to sit back for awhile and just enjoy the meetings and other gatherings we hold in the course of a year, so if you would like to volunteer for this position, please come to any board meeting, or call me and let us know of your interest.

I am anticipating and hoping for an exciting new year. With any change in officers there often comes into the mix the personalities, hopes, dreams and expectations of each and every individual. The presidents position is that of a team leader, a director, an innovator of new ideas and revisiting of old ones.

I am already mulling over ideas of how to increase public awareness of our club and the assistance we offer to owner’s, would be owner’s or potential home breeders. (Who we ultimately discourage, but I believe we should reach out equally to everyone who owns birds.)

Our goal as a club, our mission, is stated in every newsletter. Education. Education carries many faces. Look at any educational curriculum and think about the variety of classes one takes while becoming educated. Whether it is your own student just embarking into the educational cycle or an adult continuing on to higher education, courses are many and subjects offered are varied.

My personal hope, is to increase our educational branch of our club. To show others we can be a versatile club. To enrich the lives of people and show them there are alternatives to caring for their birds even if they have passed on and no family member wants to or can deal with their life long companion.

There are activities we could look into participating at where we could absolutely showcase our birds and educate people in proper care, feeding, health exams and training to allow them to enjoy their bird companions.

With our vet tested birds, we could seek out opportunities to interact with the public. Currently we have a great group of volunteers who dedicate one day a month to sit at the three area Pet Zoos and talk up the club, what we do, encourage people to join and get involved, and sometimes they take their own birds to spend the day with them. We have participated at Lousaac Library’s Reading Rendezvous.

The time to get excited about our club is now! If you have ideas, suggestions, event activities, are friends with teachers who would like to have a bird visit their students, know of an organization we could talk with, assist in toy making activities with other groups (the girl scouts approached us and asked for just such assistance, to make toys for birds), call us. We want to hear from you.

Let’s have an exciting year!

-- Kathleen O'Keefe, President

The Alaska Bird Club • P.O. Box 101825 • Anchorage AK 99510
akbirdclub@yahoo.com