Schedule
Friday, September 26, 2025
5 PM – Registration Opens (Vendors display their wares.)
6:00 – 8:00 PM – Social
7 PM – Annual Business Meeting and Festival Announcements
8:30 PM – Nocturnal field trip departs from Delta parking lot
Saturday, September 27, 2025
Noon – 4 PM Vendors display their wares
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1:00 – 1:45 PM – Shelly Eshleman – Traveling with Towhees
Eastern Towhees are declining, but little is known about their migratory pathways and patterns. Using the Motus Wildlife Tracking System, we were able to record the first migratory pathways of Eastern Towhees from 8 different tagging locations, in four different states, to better understand the full annual cycle ecology of this species. This talk will focus on the differences in migration strategies among eastern and western populations and where Eastern Towhees breeding in Pennsylvania spend the winter.
Shelly Eshleman is the Motus Avian Research Coordinator at Willistown Conservation Trust and a PhD student at the University of Delaware. Her research follows birds throughout the year to better understand their movement patterns. As someone who grew up in Lancaster County, she is particularly passionate about conserving Pennsylvanian birds.
1:45 – 2:30 PM – Dr Dan Klem
2:30-3:15 PM – Break and vendor time
3:15 – 4:00 PM – Paul Guris
5:30 – 6:00 PM – Social
6:00 PM – Banquet Room opens
6:30 PM – Dinner begins
7:00 PM – Presentation of Earl Poole and Conservation Awards
7:00 PM – Keynote speaker: Holly Merker
Ornitherapy: The Power of Birding
In today’s fast-paced digital world, birding offers a vital escape, while supporting mental and physical well-being. Research shows that time spent in nature and around birds can actively reduce stress, depression, and anxiety, while helping build a stronger heart and immune system.
Within the program we’ll delve into our personal connections to birds, learn how to maximize the wellness benefits of birding, and cover the latest research surrounding the positive impact of wild birds on human wellbeing.
Holly Merker is a professional birding guide, award-winning author, podcaster, and lecturer who provides nature-based wellness programs for people of all ages. Combining backgrounds in art therapy, nature and forest therapy, wellness counseling, mindfulness mentoring, and bird identification, she is a global advocate for the practice of Mindful Birding. Holly has co-authored two books which guide readers into optimizing the wellness benefits birds provides us, including the award-winning Ornitherapy: For Your Mind, Body, and Soul (Crossley Books, 2021), and The Power of Birdwatching (Die Kraft Der Vogel Beobachtung, Freya verlag, 2023 – available in Europe only). She is also co-host and co-producer of the Mindful Birding Podcast and is the founder of the Mindful Birding Network.
Dedicated to bird conservation, Holly has been the state coordinator and lead reviewer for eBird in Pennsylvania since 2005, was a two-term voting member and Chair of the Pennsylvania Ornithological Records Committee, a PSO Board Member, and Chair of the PSO Education Committee. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, the Finch Research Network, Wild Bird Feeding Institute’s Research Foundation, and the Frontiers in Ornithology Association.
In 2022, Holly was honored to be the recipient of the ABA Conservation and Education Award given by the American Birding Association for her work in both those areas involving birds.
In her free time, Holly spends every possible moment practicing Ornitherapy, which she credits in helping defeat breast cancer, restoring her health mentally and physically.
Sunday, September 28, 2025
7:00 AM – Field trips
