At the annual meeting in June, the Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society presented its 1997 Conservation Award to Lt. Col. Charles H. Gross for his efforts to create a long-term habitat management plan for the Fuel Supply Point in San Pedro. Youth Conservation Awards were made to Alli Henry, Hedieh Rahmanou and Sarah Wald for their contributions to our chapter and to the betterment of the environment of their home communities, and Audubon YES! Awards were made to eleven high school students representing five local schools.

Colonel Chuck Gross (right) receives 1997 Conservation Award from Chapter Vice-President Allen Franz (left) and Jess Morton (center). Photo by Leslie Gross.

During his three-year term as commander of the fuel supply base, Lt. Col. Gross has seen it become the focal point of some of  the most intensive habitat planning in the country due to the presence there of several rare animals. Rather than take the customary approach to environmental problems, which is to ask how little has to be done to meet minimum conservation requirements, Gross looked to see how much could be done without interfering with the mission of the base itself. He then worked with military and other governmental agencies, local volunteer organizations and academic institutions to develop resources to implement his findings. The habitat management plan which has emerged, and will be passed on to the new base commander, who takes over in August, promises to restore up to 200 acres of native grasslands, a small, but rich, riparian zone, and many acres of coastal sage scrub habitat for use by endangered Palos Verdes blue butterflies, California Gnatcatchers and other scarce indigenous species. At the same time, this effort has proved to be a public relations triumph for the military, since it has turned out to be a model how cooperative ventures between groups can be created.

Young people shared the spotlight with Lt. Col. Gross. In addition to Alli Henry, Chadwick School senior, Hedieh Rahmanou, El Camino College sophomore, and Sarah Wald, South High senior,  who received awards recognizing uncounted hours given to environmental work over the course of their school careers, students from Mira Costa, Narbonne, North, San Pedro and South High Schools were given YES! Awards, recognizing 50 or more hours of community service in conservation-related activities. The students honored were Sal Alvarez, Carol Chang, Dan Elder, Erika Hart, Charlie Hohn, Kathy Ku, David Milam, Leann Ortmann, James Payton, Larry Ramirez and Michelle Williams. Of these five were seniors, four juniors and two sophomores. Of them, Leann Ortmann has joined our Board of Directors and will be handling publicity for the chapter this next year.

Audubon Adventures is for you--an elementary classroom program that stimulates curiosity and helps develop an early respect for the beauty and diversity of life on Earth. Audubon Adventure is a 4-page newsletter written for children in grades 3-6, with topics of interest and fun activities that will fit your curriculum.

With membership, each teacher will receive six complete classroom lessons, along with a teacher's guide for each subject presented. Teachers can subscribe for either English or Spanish editions of the newsletters. Class sets include 32 issues of each publication. All materials arrive at the beginning of the school year to assist integration into your curriculum.

The Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society is again offering this wonderful teaching aid at no cost to local schools. If you are not a teacher, but are interested in our program, become a sponsor of a classroom or school. A small investment on your part will help assure an increased environmental awareness of the youth in our area. To enroll or be a sponsor, call Debbie Baker at 377-2536.

In geologic time, 20 years is just a blip on a vast array of geological events. In human terms, 20 years can be one-quarter of a lifetime. By next February, this Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society will be 20 years old!

People with legal minds might think of PV/SB Audubon as just the name for a "not-for-profit" organization, a corporation or some other artificial legal entity. But this organization began with people who were interested in watching and studying birds and nature. People like Stu Bedwell, Eric Brooks, Georgene Foster, Cathy and Virgil Hanson, Jess Morton and others who felt the need for a local bird group, which was not being provided by the surrounding Audubon chapters in Long Beach, Los Angeles or Santa Monica.

Then there were other people, such as Bob Carr, Ken Malloy, Bart Tendick, Shirley Turner and many more, who were interested in saving some of our last natural land, places like Harbor Lake and Madrona Marsh, rich with birds and wildlife habitat. And those people joined to help form the organization. Officers were elected, a Board of Directors was formed, and still more interested people came to help, such as early newsletter editors Judy Elliot and Devi Anderson.

The birdwalks at the South Coast Botanic Garden quickly became an Audubon institution, and the monthly program meetings introduced members to birds, flowers and other natural wonders. The chapter was well under way. In the next issue of Hummin', I will tell you of some of the people who helped to build the Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society.

For every mile of interstate highway there are eight miles of roads carved across our National Forests. The 377,000 miles of roads nationwide in the Forest Service's realm are 15 times the circumference of the Earth! These roads damage ecosystems in several ways, and when road-building is combined with clear-cutting, the result is disastrous, causing severe erosion, silting of rivers, flooding and landslides, An aerial assessment of 422 landslides in 1995 and 1996 found that 70% were related to Forest Service roads.

Continued road-building in unprotected roadless wildlands is a major threat to some of the most important and rare wildlife habitat in the nation. Species as diverse as migratory birds and black bears take refuge from predators in remaining blocks of unfragmented forest. Roads cut open these natural wildlife refuges, exposing them to human traffic, new competitors and predators. Fungi, disease and insects are spread by vehicles along roads and 75% of forest fires start along roads.

The Forest Service subsidizes the construction of logging roads by a) handing out $90 million annually to timber companies for road construction, b) paying for all engineering and assessment costs for roads projects, c) allocating funds for maintaining timber roads, and b) spending money to restore fish and wildlife populations hurt by road building.

If you don't think that your tax dollars should be spent to build roads through our few remaining roadless lands, please join the effort to end all taxpayer-funded logging road construction. An Amendment to do this was proposed by Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass) and John Porter (R-Ill). Many of us wrote to our Congress members urging a vote for the Porter/Kennedy amendment.

On July 10th, the House of Representatives voted 211-209 to support an amendment offered by Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash) to reduce subsidies for logging roads by $30 million. The Porter/Kennedy amendment would have cut the road subsidy by $90 million.

It is very important to urge our Senators to address this issue, and to end taxpayer funding for logging road construction. Write or call:

Senator Dianne Feinstein, 331 Hart Senate Office Bldg., Washington, DC 20510, (202) 224-3841, or

Senator Barbara Boxer, 112 Hart Senate Office Bldg., Washington, DC (202) 20510, 224-3553

I also urge you to write a letter to the President of DuPont. Please tell him that he must not strip mine for titanium ore along the border of Okefenokee Swamp--one of the largest intact fresh water wetlands left on Earth. And, in Utah, Conoco (a DuPont subsidiary) is pushing forward with plans to drill for oil and gas within the newly established Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah's spectacular redrock canyonlands. This drilling must be stopped. Since I worked for DuPont as a chemist from 1946 until 1951, I have a vested interest in stopping these outrages. Write to:

John A. Krol

President & CEO

E.I. DuPont de Nemours Corp.

1007 Market St.

Wilmington, DE 19898

or call DuPont (800) 441-7515

and Conoco (800) 759-6507

Corie Takasane, computer guru, and new member of our Board of Directors, has put our chapter on the world wide web. You can take a look at our web pages at:

http://www.audubon.org/chapter/ca/palosverdes

The posting includes information on officers, chapter events and many recent newsletter articles. Our Audubon YES! program is also featured, with current activities calendars and a complete listing of Audubon YES! Award winners. In the near future, the data from our fisheries forum briefing book will be available on line and will be accessible through this web site.

If you have items you would like posted on our web pages, or would like to help maintain our pages, please contact Corie at: corie@usa.net

One of our local cable stations, MediaOne, has produced a half-hour program on the panel discussion from our May 17th Southern California Fisheries Forum. If you missed the forum itself, this program will give you an idea of how four local fishermen view the state of our marine resources.

Shown from left to right in the photograph above are the two recreational fishermen, Dan Frumkes and Paul Simon, and two commercial fishermen, Tony West and Mike McKorkle, who took part in the panel discussion, which gave forum attendees an insider's view to the world of fishing. This video program is a valuable addition to our understanding of fisheries, and presents a range of ideas about sea life which have been developed by four knowledgeable and articulate men who, between them, have 200 years of practical experience with the sea. If you haven't seen the show, call MediaOne for its next airing time.

You are invited to spend a warm August night under shooting stars at the midsummer Veggieburger Barbecue Star Party. Your Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society invites members and friends to the exciting Perseid Meteor Shower. We will be looking at a stream of particles, left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which careen into the Earth's atmosphere burning up in tiny flashes of light. This year's Perseid peak will be early Tuesday morning, when it is expected that up to 100 meteors an hour will streak across the sky. Before midnight, it may be possible to see 30 or 40 per hour.

The plan is to gather in De Portola Park on Tuesday, August 11th, at 6:30 P.M. The park is located on Rolling Hills Road between Crenshaw and Hawthorne Boulevards. Fires will be started in the barbecue pits and veggieburgers and drinks will be provided. Observers are urged to bring salads or desserts to share, and also should provide their own plates, glasses, silverware and napkins. And bring your binoculars-they're good for things other than birds!

After a leisurely meal, good conversation, ball playing, bird watching and relaxing, telescopes will be set up to look at the summer sky. As the sky darkens, observers should be able to examine Jupiter, stars like Vega, Spica and Arcturus and the summer constellations. It is advisable to bring blankets and sleeping bags to lie on as you gaze at meteors streaking across the sky. The later that you stay awake, the better are your chances of seeing a really heavy meteor shower. To make reservations for this free event, please call me at 545-1384.

Although we are well aware that one person can make a difference, perhaps we don't always see that in ourselves. Maybe it just takes a strong enough belief in something we care about in order to break through our lack of involvement. Or perhaps we just don't always think of ourselves as that "one person." Whatever the case, we can always look to others, past and present to inspire us. A call to action faces us all. It's how we choose to act upon it that makes the difference.

One person of inspiration can be found in pioneer naturalist Florence Merriam Bailey. I have recently had the pleasure of reading Harriet Kofalk's book entitled No Woman Tenderfoot, published by Texas A & M University Press. Florence was born in rural upstate New York in 1863. While growing up, she took an avid interest in the wildlife surrounding her home, especially the birds. Her father had a strong interest in natural history and became lifelong friends with naturalist John Muir. This contagious interest was passed to her brother, who later became the first head of the US Biological Survey. By the time Florence entered Smith College, she had acquired the compassion for studying live birds and observing their behaviors. She looked upon birds as living treasures to be studied for more than their bones and feathers.

By 1885, she was "engrossed in birds" and began to write articles concerning their protection. The first woman associate of the American Ornithological Union (AOU), she was horrified by the fashion trend in which not only feathers, but entire birds were being worn on women's hats. One day, in 1886, she heard a classmate exclaim that she had seen "the most beautiful hat...with thirteen bluebirds on it.." Determined to halt this craze, she organized The Smith College Audubon Society, first organizing bird walks and eventually involving the students in a campaign to open the public's eyes. The "destruction of birds had reached crisis proportions" and this popular style was claiming five million birds a year. Scientists had raised the alarm about the killing of birds for millinery ornaments and had formed the Committee on the Protection of North American Birds.

Florence tackled the fashion trend from a female perspective. To help curb the trend, she organized the distribution of articles about the dilemma to the point where she had enlisted a hundred students, a third of the college. She sent out 10,000 circulars and wrote articles of protest to newspapers. "Birdless Bonnets" was her aim. Yet in "Auk", the journal of the AOU, there were still such reports as "400,000 hummingbird skins sold in one week in London."

After college, Florence continued writing articles, magazine articles for children (including distributing children's birding literature in schools...wouldn't that be nice today!), as well as numerous books on the pleasures of birdwatching and the values of live birds. She wrote the Handbook of Birds of the Western United States after several extensive trips with her naturalist husband Vernon Bailey (a pioneer in his own right) to the west. She also wrote Birds of New Mexico, which came out in autumn 1928 and earned her the coveted AOU Brewster Medal, a biennial award for the most important book on birds of the western hemisphere. Thirty years passed before another book on the birds of New Mexico emerged.

Nevertheless, by the turn of the century, the custom of wearing birds on hats was still in "full plumage". Finally, a bill passed Congress making the interstate shipping of birds illegal. This was only the first step in halting the slaughter, but it decreased the number of victims, especially seabirds such as pelicans and grebes. Eventually, the laws and the styles changed with the help of many concerned lovers of living birds. Florence lived a long life dedicated to the promotion of educating people about the value of bird life. In her own "little" way, she helped change our world.

One person can't always change the would all alone, but even with problems of great magnitude, one person can make the "subtle" differences that eventually bring about great change. In the introduction of this book, there is a quote from Orlando Romero: "Today will be the past, and, since the future seems uncertain, we derive our strength to face each new day from the lingering warmth of what has gone by. Each one of us lives in his own time. Each one of us lives in his own world. It is the health of our own past and the health of our own world that will determine out future." Thanks to Florence for her excitement, enthusiasm, and influence amidst much misunderstanding. And thanks to Harriet Kofalk of Santa Monica for her inspiring interest in one great lady.

Sunday, April 27th, the BIG DAY for our Birdathon '97 fund-raiser, saw two teams competing for honors of the day. Bernardo Alps and Katie Penland (the B-K team) were the winners, observing 87 species. Oliver Coker and Lillian light and the rest of the O-L team saw 80 species. Other members of this fine team of intrepid birders were: Ellen Brubaker, Robert Carr, Dennis Weyrauch, Anne Morris, Corie Takasane, Jorge Wong, Richard Barth, Lena Gasparov and Ann Mason.

Thanks to your generous contributions, we raised $1048 that day. After taking off for expenses, we sent National Audubon $180 for the California Legislative Office, $180 for Audubon-California and $110 for the Kern River Research Center. Since we are sponsoring Audubon Adventures in 15 schools, much of the money we raised will go to fund this fine program. Bernardo and Katie raised nearly $300, Corie well over $150 and Lena more than $100! Special thanks are due to all of them for birding so hard and for raising so much money, too! Our thanks go to all of you who contributed your time and/or money so generously to what we all recognize is a worthy and critically important cause.

Key:

*=native species (always preferable!)

Italics = an exceptionally valuable bird attractor

B=berries/fruits attract fruit eaters

C=provides excellent cover/habitat/nest sites

H=attracts hummingbirds/nectar feeders

I=attracts insectivores

S=seeds attract seed eaters

a=annual

s=perennial shrub

t=tree

v=perennial vine

spp=various species (native species, when available, are preferable)

DESIRABLE SPECIES

bottlebrush  s/t,H,I   

*Ca. blackberry s/v,B,C       

*Ca. fuschia  s,H     

*Ca. sunflower  s,I,S

*Ca. sycamore  t,C,I

*Ca./Coast Sagebrush  s,C,I 

*Catalina cherry  t,B,C         

*climbing penstemon  s/v,H  

*coast cholla  s,C     

Cotoneaster    s,B,C

*cottonwood  spp.  t,C,I       

*coyote brush  s,C,I 

dandelion  a,S          

fan palm  t,C           

*fuschia-flowered gooseberry  s,H    

garden sunflower  a,S          

*giant rye grass  a,C

*Goldenbush spp.  s,C,I        

*holly-leaf cherry  t,B,C       

honeysuckle spp v,H

*Indian paintbrush  a,H        

*laurel sumac  s,C   

*lemonadeberry  s,C

Liquidambar  t,C,S   

*Mexican elderberry  t,B,C  

*mule fat  s,C,I        

Myoporum  t,B,C     

penstemon spp.  a,H

*prickly pear s,C      

Pyrocantha  s,B,C    

*Salvia spp  (sages)  s,C,H,I 

sow thistle  a,I,S      

*sugarbush  s,C       

*toyon  s/t,B,C         

*white/red alder  t,C,I          

*willow spp  t,C,I     

Here are a few plants that are invasive, or harmful to birds (candidates for selective removal replacement: black acacia, black mustard, Brazilian pepper, castor bean, eucalyptus, fennel, giant reed (arundo), iceplant, milk thistle, milk thistle, tree tobacco, and wild radish.

Here are a few helpful hints for those of you who would like the birds to come to you once in a while, rather than you to them. The best ways are to offer water, shelter, and food. A constant drip, freshwater bird bath, no more than an inch or two deep at the deepest part, is the ABSOLUTE BEST WAY to get birds to visit you here in dry Southern California, at all times of year! Buy an inexpensive plastic pedestal type bird bath, drill a few holes an inch or two below the top margin if need be (to keep the water shallow enough and allow it to seep through rather than spill out the top) and put a tee on your garden faucet, then a pressure reduction valve, and some drip irrigation line. The folks at your neighborhood hardware store or nursery would be happy to help you with this easy and inexpensive project.

Planting the correct vegetation helps, too. My juniper berries attract mitred and yellow-chevroned parakeets, but native trees, shrubs and annuals or those that provide edible seeds, berries, or nectar generally work best for our native birds. Although my neighbor's beautiful Liquidambar gets all of the goldfinches, my white alder gets warblers, because it brings in the native insects that they love! Pines and eucalyptus will get some warblers and hummers, but oaks, willows, sycamores, and any fruiting trees or shrubs, native or not, usually draw the crowds. Toyon, Catalina cherry, pyrocantha, cotoneaster, and some ficus species are great, too. Any red, yellow, or orange tubular flower will bring in hummingbirds. Salvia, bottlebrush, fuschia, and many others are good for attracting hummingbirds and keeping them around.

Even if a plant isn't a good food source, it may provide cover and/or good perching sites for birds attracted to your feeders. Be sure, however, that the cover doesn't prevent your birds from seeing the stealthy approach of the neighborhood cats, however! If a cat even breaks the skin of a bird, that bird is a goner-the bacteria in the cat's saliva are actually a clever adaptation! They produce a toxin which always poisons and kills the bird eventually. Neat trick for cats, not so good for the birds.

There are various types of seed feeders, and I'm still experimenting even as I write these words of advice. One thing I can say for sure is that "different feeders for different tweeters" is a fact of life. I have one, and only one, feeder that excludes house finches-it makes birds hang upside-down and probe for thistle seed, and only goldfinches and siskins are up to that task! So far however, the goldfinches haven't discovered it yet!

The best-known birds are the least picky ones. Mourning and spotted doves and sparrows like to feed on the ground or on low platform feeders. Watch your feeders or below them on the lawn for white-crowned sparrows, a beautiful wintering native species with a black and white striped head and a haunting, mournful song. House finches, rock doves (non-natives from Asia that most of us refer to as "pigeons") and house sparrows (not a true sparrow but a naturalized African weaver, sometimes called English sparrows, and commonly seen snatching french fries at MacDonald's) will eat anything, anywhere. Scrub jays like high platforms stocked with unsalted, raw black sunflower seeds. Millet, or a mix with high millet (and low milo) is the best of the cheaper, all-purpose feeds.

Of course, seed feeders won't attract most fruit or insect eaters, so people use stuff like sliced oranges for orioles or suet, but my experience with the latter is that it is useless in as warm a climate as ours. Hummingbird feeders, depending on the type, can attract orioles, warblers, and even the omnipresent house finches, unless you use the "Best-1" brand. Be sure to keep the hummer feeder clean (every three days in warm weather) and use a 4-to-one ratio boiled and cooled water and sugar mix.

In summary, your best bet for attracting birds is to provide fresh water in a constant-drip bath, native plants, good safe cover, and maybe a seed and/or hummer feeder. Be sure, however, to use tinted windows, blinds, or decals if your windows are situated in a way that birds fly into them, thinking the inside of your house is a clear passage way. Then grab your binoculars or just sit back and enjoy the show! Some new feeders even attach to the outside of your window, and these can put on a spectacular show!

To learn more about birds, contact me at 374-7473 to request info and/or a free brochure describing my "Birding Southern California" natural history tours.

Dear reader, your author is a person who assumes that tomorrow's sunrise will be somewhat east of tomorrow's sunset, and that planet Earth is not quite as flat as a C.D. Feeling comfortable with those assumptions, I'll assume that despite the fact that you are a member of the Audubon Society, you have some interest in birds. On that basis, I've decided to use birds as the central topic of this article.

There are many interesting characteristics of birds in addition to their aviation skills. The following paragraphs describe a few such characteristics.

With most bird species, it is difficult to identify the sex of an individual bird merely by looking at the bird. Birds of those species are monomorphic; that is, of the same visible physical form. One such species is Cyanopsitta spixii, the Spix's macaw. When there was only one Spix's macaw left in the wild, that species was the world's most endangered. The bird was seen in a very dry area of east-central Brazil. Scientists then decided to release a captive one of the about 30, in hopes that it would mate with the wild one and thus add to the wild population. However, nobody was sure whether the wild bird was male or female. The scientists didn't want to try to capture it because of the potential danger to which the catching effort would expose that bird. Therefore, they decided to seek a method of determining the wild bird's sex so that they could release a captive one of the opposite sex. Genetic studies of captive birds of several species, including the Spix's macaw, yielded adequate information for sex determination. Analyses of the Spix's macaw's DNA showed only one gene with 104 base pairs, whereas the female's DNA showed one of 104 and another of 73 base pairs. After those genetic discoveries, the DNA contained in feathers molted by the remaining wild bird showed the wild bird to be male. Therefore, a female one from captivity was released as a potential mate, and news of whether nestlings were found is being awaited. I hope that they mate before it's too late!

Recent news has come regarding other aspects of differentiation between avian males and females. The ratio of males to females, called the sex ratio, has been found to differ significantly, even within a single species, in different environmental areas. Specifically, the Seychelles warbler, Acrocephalus sechellensis, has been reported as having the highest known bird variation in the hatching sex ratio. In areas of high insect prey availability, those warblers hatched a much higher number of females than of males, with males constituting only 13% of the total. In areas of low prey availability, many more males than females were hatched, with males being 77% of the total. The hatchling sex was determined by taking small blood samples from those little birds and analyzing the samples for genetic properties. To verify the theory that it was the high food quantity that influenced the sex ratios, breeding pairs in high-quantity food areas were moved to low-quantity food areas. Those pairs, all of which had previously produced the high female hatchling numbers, then produced the high male numbers, thus verifying the theory. I can word the next question as, "Why produce more females when there is a lot of available food, and fewer females when food is scarce?" The proposed answer by the observers is that in the high food areas the grown-up female hatchlings are helpers, for example by bringing food to the parent birds and thus lowering the food-acquiring efforts of the parents; but in the low food areas, the grown-up female hatchlings compete with the parent birds for food; and actions of the male hatchlings did not visibly change. No one yet knows how all that affected the sex of hatchlings.

East Africa has been a great source of paleontological material. Using modern dating techniques, stone tools found in 1992-1994, near the Gona River in Ethiopia, have now been ascertained to have an age of 2.5-2.6 million years, in the late Pliocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period of our current Cenozoic Era. They are the oldest stone tools of any yet found on our planet. Thus, early hominids of that time had developed the techniques of stone tool production. Most of the Gona tools have sharp functional edges for axe-type tasks, but elsewhere on some of them there are signs of missing chips and of other indentations, suggesting that the same tools were held at a different angle for performing tasks such as hammering. No hominid body fossils have been found near the Gona tool deposits. However, your author speculates that the toolmakers were either late members of genus Australopithecus or extremely early members of genus Homo. The latter genus is strongly and widely believed to have evolved from the former one, but the exact date of that evolutionary event is not yet known. Another interesting aspect of these tools is the dating methods used. Since Earth's formation, there have been times when the magnetic field has shifted, and even reversed. In some locations, magnetic particles that have been uncovered were found to be positioned out of conformance with the present orientation of Earth's magnetic field, thus showing that those particles were of a certain age, namely of the time when the magnetic field was oriented in a direction which so positioned the particles. That technique, called paleomagnetic analysis, associates the stone tools with the age of the magnetic particles found on the same sedimentary stratum underground. Also, a technique named radioisotopic age analysis was used. The emission strength of a radioactive element depends on the kind of element and on its age. Studies have been able to provide an age estimate based on the type of element and the radioactive emission strength. That applies also to an element's isotope, which differs in neutron numbers and/or atomic weight from the main form of the element. So, our numerically-high-multiple-level-great-grandparents of about 85,000 generations ago (assuming one generation to be about 30 years) included pretty smart toolmakers, and our present-day generations of scientists include pretty smart paleoanthropologists.

In our views of the past, let's now look back only 100 years. In 1897, J.J. Thomson, in England, measured the ratio of mass to charge of particles in a cathode ray. (Cathode ray tubes are currently used as TV picture tubes, radar screens, computer monitors, etc.) Thomson's particle analysis led to the identification of those particles as electrons by way of the following sequence of doings. In 1899, he found that particles emitted from metal surfaces because of photoelectric or thermoelectric effects had that same ratio measurement, and the name electron was then assigned to those particles by other physicists. Thomson additionally made several measurements of the electron's charge, which provided crucial information about the mass and charge of ions of known elements. (An ion is the result of an atom gaining or losing one or more electrons.) That convinced physicists that atoms are not elementary particles; i.e., not particles having no constituent components, and therefore not indivisible particles. During our century, other atomic components have been discovered, including leptons, quarks, bosons, etc. Also during our century, the fact that atoms are divisible was crucial information for the conception and development of the atomic bomb and of forms of usable atomic energy. Hence, the centenary of Thomson's work is quite a notable time.

Sharing Nature With Children:  A few people willing to spend a few hours one day a month working with high school students and children are wanted to help with our educational program at Wilderness Park in Redondo Beach. This monthly program introduces youngsters to a variety of aspects of the natural world around them in a setting which includes meadow, woodland, streamside and marsh habitats. Docents help lead the children in various games, walks and crafts designed to show off the park and the plants and animals in it.

If you like working with children, this is an excellent way to become involved with chapter activities. We want to expand this program to Torrance, San Pedro and other cities. High school and other students who volunteer receive Audubon YES! Award credits.

Join this exciting program by calling Lillian Light at 545-1384.

Audubon YES!:  Chapter Representatives are needed to guide school groups in our Audubon YES! (youth environmental service) program. Representatives work a few hours each month with school ecology clubs, service groups or individual students from a single school to coordinate service projects, such as habitat cleanups or Earth Day displays. Since the role of Chapter Representative is to make sure that our Audubon chapter provides the school group or student with adequate support for their programs, you need not be an environmental expert . The chapter's YES! staff handles that end of things. We especially need volunteers for Rolling Hills Prep and Torrance High School groups-these are wonderful young people, bright and full of enthusiasm. You will have a great time!

Call Jess Morton at 832-5601 and say YES!, I want to help.

Audubon YES!: School ecology club teacher-sponsors and student-presidents are asked to enroll their school eco-club in Audubon YES! Participating students will earn recognition for the community environmental service projects they do. Students who make a substantial contribution to their school and community will receive the Audubon YES! Award, which can be used on school and scholarship applications. Call Jess Morton at 832-5601 for information on the Audubon YES! program.

This page is part of the Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society website.