BIRDERS TO FLOCK HERE FOR MEETING

First Alfred Hitchcock created "The Birds." Now the Audubon Society of Missouri is bringing us "The Birders."

An estimated 100 bird watchers from around the state will congregate at Southeast Missouri State University April 23 through 25 for the organization's spring meeting. They're coming to check out the region's birding sites and hoping to spot the fish crows, Mississippi kites and warblers found along this stretch of the Mississippi flyway.

Officials say this is probably the first time Cape Girardeau ever has hosted a meeting of the Audubon Society of Missouri.

Field trips are scheduled all three days. Trips will go to the Horseshoe Lake Conservation Area, the Union County Conservation Area and the LaRue-Pine Hills Ecological Area in Illinois, and to Trail of Tears State Park, the I.R. Kelso Wildlife Sanctuary-Juden Creek-Twin Trees Park, and Maple Valley Trail-Cape Girardeau County Park.

A bird siting list will be compiled on the final day of the meeting.

"We welcome people that know how to identify birds and people that don't," said Dr. Bill Eddleman, president of the hosting Four Season Audubon Society.

Eddleman, an associate professor of biology at Southeast, will lecture April 23 about his seven years of research into black rails. The very secretive marsh bird is found primarily in Arizona and Florida.

"Most birders really want to see it badly," he said.

Only one has ever been spotted locally.

The meeting also will focus on the effects of chip mills on Southern Missouri forests and wildlife. A panel discussion April 24 will include representatives of the chip mill industry, a private landowner, private foresters and people who oppose chip mills, including a representative of the Nature Conservancy. The discussion will be moderated by a forester from the Missouri Department of Conservation.

The public is invited to the panel discussion, which will follow a 6:30 p.m. dinner at the Show Me Center.

Cape Girardeau's relationship with the Audubon Society of Missouri is long. Dr. Homer Bolen, a longtime zoology professor at Southeast, was treasurer of the ASM from 1934 to 1972. Bolen died in 1988.

In 1937, he helped arrange an agreement in which Judge I.R. Kelso donated a 27-acre tract of land to the Audubon Society as a wildlife sanctuary to be leased to the university.

With the Kelso heirs' additional donation of a 30-acre buffer zone in 1964 and 76 acres acquired by the university in 1979, the sanctuary now totals 133 acres of mature forest with three ponds. The sanctuary is next to Twin Trees Park in the city's northeast reaches.

Registration for the meeting will be held from 3 to 7 p.m. April 23 in Room 121 at Rhodes Hall and during the morning of April 24.