Director's Open House Featured Speakers & Events
10am -Noon, Hawkwatching at Tower Hill
With Mark Lynch and Sheila Caroll, Outdoors
Meet at American flag pole behind Stoddard Visitors Center
Each fall, thousands of hawks pass over central Massachusetts on their
way south
making their migration one of the great avian spectacles in New England.
Join us for a morning of hawkwatching during the prime time for the passage
of Broad-wing Hawks and other species. Bring binoculars (minimally 7X35);
spotting scopes if you
have them; and a field guide. Mark and Sheila will help spot and teach
you some of the finer points of identifying
“hawks at a distance”.
1:45-2:30pm, Birds,
Butterflies and Blooms
In the Theatre (only in case of inclement weather)
In lieu of Hawkwatching, Sheila and Mark will present a show titled Birds, Butterflies and Blooms, compiled during the past 3 years of the Breeding Bird Atlas Project. Mark Lynch teaches advanced level birding classes at Broad Meadow Brook MAS, where he is also an ecological monitor. He is the book review editor for Bird Observer and was the regional editor of the Worcester County section of The Bird Finding Guide to Western Massachusetts. Along with his partner, Sheila Carroll, he is a Regional Coordinator for the Worcester County section of the current Breeding Bird Atlas. Mark hosts INQUIRY on WICN (90.5FM), an interview show that focuses on the arts and sciences and topics of interest to birders. Sheila Carroll has been an avid birder for almost 30 years. An Advisory Committee member at Mass Audubon’s Broad Meadow Brook Sanctuary, Sheila co-leads birding trips with her significant other, Mark Lynch, and does the photography used in a variety of classes and presentations. Her blog Looking Out from Central Massachusetts www. gremlinthecat.blogspot.com provides an entertaining look at the adventures of birding every weekend.
Noon - 1pm, Lecture with Carla Capalbo, in the Theatre. Book sale afterward.
Lecture arranged by ItalTrade Partners of New England, Boston, MA
Carla Capalbo will share her nomadic life as a travel writer specializing in artisan foods and wines that has taken her to live in remote fishing villages and mountain communities in Southern Italy. She will illustrate her talk with photographs she has taken of Italy’s breathtaking landscapes, and the small towns, vineyards and artisans who appear in her books. As a special tribute to Tower Hill, Carla will tell us about her experience organizing The Costiera dei Fiori Garden at London Chelsea Flower Show 2006, for which she and designer Robert Myers were awarded a coveted gold medal. Carla is an internationally acclaimed writer and expert on Italian artisan foods and wines, and the restaurants that feature them. Her many books include The Food and Wine Guide to Naples and Campania, The Food and Wine Lover’s Companion to Tuscany, The Ultimate Italian Cookbook and the just-published Collio Fine Wines and Foods from Italy’s North-East, illustrated with her striking photography. Among her prestigious awards, she was granted the Douglas Attems Prize and the Veronelli Prize for food writing in 2007.