LEWISTON —  The Stanton Bird Club’s first meeting of the 2013-14 birding season will be on Monday, Oct. 7, at the Green Ladle, 156 East Ave.

A silent auction and social hour with club displays will take place from 5 to 6 p.m. A dinner choice of beef tips, baked haddock or vegetable lasagna will be served from 6 to 7. The annual meeting and monthly program will be held at 7. A club meeting will be held and silent auction winners announced at 8 p.m.

Guest speaker will be ornithologist Jeff Wells, who will present “The Ivory-Billed and the Boreal: Lessons and Legacies.”

Wells was a member of Cornell’s first top-secret search team that descended on the Arkansas swamps soon after the report of an ivory-billed woodpecker in February 2004.

Wells’ search for the thought-to-be-extinct bird was full of excitement and adventure, but it also had an influence on his views about bird conservation, especially America’s last great wilderness, the Boreal Forest. Stretching from Alaska to Newfoundland and encompassing more than 1.4 billion acres, the Boreal Forest is the breeding area for as many as 3 billion birds.

Wells will recount his experiences as a member of the ivory-billed woodpecker search effort and discuss the lessons that can apply to protecting the last remaining intact ecosystems.

Wells is the senior scientist for the Boreal Songbird Initiative and International Boreal Conservation Campaign, Seattle-based nonprofit organizations working internationally for the conservation of North America’s Boreal forest.

The presentation is free and open to the public. Dinner will cost $17.50 and those interested in dinner should RSVP no later than Friday, Sept. 27. Indicate meal preference and send a check payable to Stanton Bird Club, to: Stanton Treasurer, PO Box 3172, Lewiston, ME, 04243. Dinner reservations are required, no walk-ins will be accepted. For more information, visit www.stantonbirdclub.org.

New members are welcome. For more information, call 888-363-0007, visit www.stantonbirdclub.org or email questions to [email protected].