Each year Chapters of National Audubon Society file an Annual Report with the national organization summarizing activities for the past year and plans for the upcoming year. Active members and readers of The Crossing are of course aware of much of what this organization does; but we usually just look at what we are doing for the next month or two. I thought it might be useful to share a brief summary of the activities we carried out last fiscal year (July 1, 2002 - June 30, 2003). We plan (and have already started) similar activities for this fiscal year.

• Organized and led about two dozen WCAS field trips,

• Sponsored about a dozen additional field trips conducted by Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association,

• Held eight member's meetings (well, last year it was seven owing to a major snow storm in February), each including a program on birds or conservation,

• Sponsored Audubon Adventures in about sixty 4th grade classrooms,

• Participated in Super Science Weekend and Mercer County Earth Day activities,

• Carried out national conservation advocacy activities via letter writing campaigns,

• Carried out local conservation activities to preserve habitat in central New Jersey,

• Sponsored and provided volunteers for the Featherbed Lane Bird Population Research Station,

• Sponsored Monitoring Endemic Birds and Educating local people about Their Importance in Loma Alta, Ecuador,

• Promoted and participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count,

• Organized, sponsored, and participated in the Princeton and Trenton Christmas Bird Counts,

• Organized, sponsored, and participated in the first ever Mercer County butterfly count,

• Issued a report on our biological inventory at Carson Road Woods,

• Conducted a biological inventory at Alexauken Creek Wildlife Management Area,

• Published six issues of our newsletter, and

• Maintained our chapter web site.

Considering that all of the work is done by volunteers, and typically by only a small number of them, I think it's a pretty impressive list, and I would encourage those members who would like to become more active to help us do even more in the future.