September is Membership Renewal Time

As you dive into fall birding and CVAS activities, please renew your membership with Chemung Valley Audubon. It's easy and inexpensive! Your membership supports another year filled with:

• Birding Field Trips
• Monthly Meetings with Speakers
• Activities at Northrup Hill and Gleason Wildlife Sanctuaries
• Bird Counts: Christmas Bird Count, Eagle and Waterfowl Count, Migration Marathon, Montezuma Muckrace, Climate Watch
• Outreach at Community Events: Elmira College Octagon Fair, Wisner and Corning Farmers' Markets, Sportsman's Show, Chemung County Fair, Pride, Juneteenth, and More!
• Activities that Coordinate with Audubon NY/CT, NYSOA, and Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge
• All free of charge and open to the public!

Chemung Valley Audubon is a mission-driven, all-volunteer organization and your birding home in the Southern Finger Lakes Region of New York.

Click here to view our membership options. To our renewing members, thank you for your continued support. To our new members, welcome!

In addition to your membership, you can also support our work by purchasing our merchandise.

Chemung Valley Audubon Society has teamed up with local Corning retailer Kabrics to create an online 'Merch Store' featuring a wide range of silk-screened and embroidered CVAS apparel!

To view and order your apparel, go to the CVAS Merch Store. You have a choice of three logo emblem designs and a wide variety of apparel types, colors, and sizes. Embroidered designs for hats, vests, and polo shirts will be available soon.

Payment is made online and your purchased items will be shipped directly to you. To save on the shipping cost, you can pick your 'merch' up at their facility located at 2707 Forest Hill Drive, East Corning, three minutes off Route 17/86 exit 48 (i.e., the Corning Hospital exit).

We welcome feedback on the apparel selections. We’re also interested in knowing if there are other types of apparel people would like. Please contact Martin, Don, or Rich to provide your feedback. Thanks. Happy shopping!

Enjoy a Bird Walk at Your Place

Have you ever been taking a walk and wished you had someone to help you identify the birds that you were seeing? Did you ever wonder what kinds of birds were living around your yard or property? Now, the Chemung Valley Audubon Society will help you make your wish come true through the Bird Walk at Your Place program. A CVAS member will meet you at the place of your choosing and accompany you to look and listen for birds for up to an hour and a half. The cost is $35 per walk. Make checks payable to: Chemung Valley Audubon Society.

To schedule a walk, text Bill Ostrander at 607-207-0000 and he will get in touch with you to schedule a date and time on weekdays from April thru September, during daylight hours. You choose the location—your own property or any public location or trail in the CVAS membership area (148XX and 149XX zip codes).

Chemung Valley Audubon Society invites you outdoors! Over the past several years the local Audubon chapter has developed two properties in Steuben County (Northrup Hill & Gleason), as well as a trail at Mark Twain State Park in Chemung County, where you and your family can enjoy outdoor experiences.

Hiking and wildlife watching are good for our bodies and our sense of well-being. CVAS invites people to use the trails and to enjoy the beauty and spectacle of wild nature in the Southern Tier. “Birding is an inexpensive, healthful, always entertaining outdoor activity that heightens one’s awareness and understanding of the environment and can be done anytime, anywhere,” noted Bill Ostrander. A lifelong birder and Chemung County resident, Ostrander leads Audubon walks that help people learn about and enjoy our area’s birds.

Northrup Hill Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary is a 24-acre preserve on Learn Road in the Town of Rathbone, Steuben County. The sanctuary’s wildlife habitats including grasslands, early-successional hardwoods, and a white pine–hemlock–hardwood forest that slopes downhill to a wetland. At an elevation of 1,700 feet, the property commands stunning views of the surrounding countryside. The land was given to CVAS as a gift from the Northrup family to be used as a nature preserve. The Northrup Hill Schoolhouse, a structure on the National Register of Historic Places, sits adjacent to the preserve.

Beginning in 2022, in a prepared 20-square-foot space, Chemung Valley Audubon members Brian and Mary Jane Dugan began planting Andropogon gerardi (big bluestem) and Sporobolus heterolepis (prairie dropseed), both native grasses; and Coreopsis lanceolata (lanceleaf coreopsis), a native plant that attracts butterflies and bees with its beautiful yellow flowers when it blooms in June and July and provides nesting materials for bees all season long. According to the Lady Bird Johnson Center, big bluestem provides cover for at least 24 species of songbirds and nesting sites or seeds for sparrows. It attracts birds and butterflies and is a larval host to butterflies Anatrytone logan (the Delaware Skipper) and Atrytonopsis hianna (the Dusted Skipper).

The Gleason Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary covers 35-acres on Kelly Hill Road in the Steuben County Town of Caton. It is predominately forested, with a system of trails that passes through groves of hemlocks, pines, and northern hardwoods. A pond and small intermittent streams enhance the sanctuary’s value to plants and animals. The property was acquired with a bequest from the estate of long-time CVAS members Herbert and Virginia Gleason.

Driving directions and information about the trails are on our Northrup, Gleason, and Mark Twain State Park pages. Our trails and activities are open to all regardless of their age, race, religion, ability or gender identity.