Our Chapter    Columbus Audubon: An Idea Takes Flight Columbus Audubon was founded in 1913 and is a chapter of Audubon. Our mission now is the same as it was in 1913: to promote the appreciation, understanding and conservation of birds, other wildlife and their habitats, for present and future generations. With approximately 3,000 members in Central Ohio, Columbus Audubon is one of the largest Audubon chapters in the nation. We offer a variety of ways for members and other nature enthusiasts to learn about and enjoy wildlife. We organize field trips throughout the year, hold regular nature programs, and offer classroom-field experiences, such as our popular Birding 101 series. Each spring we celebrate our own Eco-Weekend, a fun educational program for adults and families held in the outdoors that is unique to Columbus Audubon. We also manage a rare wetland habitat - Calamus Swamp - as a Columbus Audubon nature preserve.  For those who wish to "give back" to nature through volunteering their time, we have Work Trips - regular trips to maintain Ohio's state nature preserves. We also provide opportunities to help protect habitat through the activities and guidance of our Conservation Committee. Columbus Audubon welcomes adults and children, novices and experts, members and non-members (though your best experience will come from becoming a member of our chapter). To learn more about Columbus Audubon and how to get involved, please peruse our Web site for information about membership, activities, volunteer opportunities, important contacts, and much more. For more information on the origins and early years of Columbus Audubon, click here. Our Logo - Why the Song Sparrow? If you are not a Columbus Audubon member, you may wonder why we chose to incorporate a relatively common bird, the Song Sparrow, into our logo. In fact, the Song Sparrow occupies a special place in the history of central Ohio ornithology. To understand the importance of central Ohio Song Sparrows we need to go back to 1927, when Margaret Morse Nice, mother of five daughters, moved to Columbus when her husband accepted a physiology professorship at OSU. By then, amateur ornithology had become the central focus of her life. She and her husband bought a 60-acre property on bluff above the Olentangy River near the Ohio State University campus, and she wrote that it was a "tangle of trees, weeds and bushes": perfect Song Sparrow habitat. Here she launched her definitive study of Song Sparrow behavior, which startled the ornithological world. She developed new methods of identification so that she could trace the life cycle of individual Song Sparrows for several years in succession. To her, the Song Sparrow was "the most admirable bird imaginable for an intensive study, for each is a unique personality." Her work was published in 1937 and 1943 as Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow; and a popularized account of the research was published in 1939 as The Watcher at the Nest. That book was the first book illustrated by Roger Tory Peterson. Page updated 01/20/04 © Columbus Audubon 2004