December 2011 Speaker

Our December speaker will be Mr. David Hartgrove, a highly knowledgeable birder from Halifax River Audubon.

Mr. Hartgrove was born in High Point, North Carolina in 1947 but grew up in Miami and attended school there, graduating from Hialeah High School in 1965. In August of that year he went to work for Florida Power & Light Company. By 1972 he had served a tour in Viet Nam with the US Navy Seabees, risen through the ranks of FPL to become a lineman, was a divorced father of two children and had just returned to Miami after a year in Titusville.

His birding epiphany came in 1973 when he saw a small bird dispatch and consume an even smaller bird in order to feed its nestlings. The bird on the menu was a House Sparrow and the consumer was a Loggerhead Shrike. In 1986 he became a volunteer with the Florida Breeding Bird Atlas Project and during the next six years spent a substantial amount of time in the field with some of the most experienced birders in Florida. This activity was the impetus for what could now rightly be called an obsession to observe birds whenever possible. In 1994 he became the Volusia County Compiler for the North American Migration Count, & has served in that capacity to the present. In 1996 he reestablished the Daytona Beach Christmas Bird Count & continues as it’s compiler. Since 1987 he has been the Conservation Chair for Halifax River Audubon in Daytona Beach. He has led many field trips for Audubon, The Nature Conservancy, the Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival & other groups.

Mr. Hartgrove will present slides and discussion on Gull and Tern ID. This will provide another perspective and an excellent follow up to our beach field trip with Mike Brothers. Slides “hold still” much better than the birds on the beach.