Meet Margaret Dye, our 2026 Scholarship winner!

  “Standing on the sandy shore at the mouth of the Santa Rosa Estuary in Bahia de Kino, Sonora, as I counted terns through the telescope I had trekked, my love for fieldwork became crystal clear." So began Margaret Dye’s essay for Prescott Audubon Society’s environmental scholarship application. What followed was an extensive recording of field experiences and surveys Maggie has participated in: Brown Pelican Productivity Survey, Waterbird Diversity and Abundance Survey, Point Count of Songbirds, among others. In addition, she took an intensive course located in the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile ”designing and teaching an environmental studies curriculum….teaching nine lessons and facilitating five student-led lessons.” She plans “to put [her] college experience and degree into action…by working on conservation projects in the fields of chiropterology [study of bats] and ornithology, and by sharing [her] knowledge and passion through education.” Maggie is a senior at Prescott College, pursuing a B.S. in environmental studies. She stated that “this scholarship will allow me to invest in field guides and gear” for working on bat surveys in the Flagstaff area next spring. Congratulations, Maggie!

This year, the PAS Board approved increasing the scholarship amount to $1,500 responding to the increased costs that college students face. We received a total of nine applications, a few more than last year’s numbers. Once again, the scholarship committee had some tough decisions to make, as the quality of the majority of the applications was quite high. Nonetheless, committee members are happy to do this work and proud to be a part of PAS’s support for education and conservation efforts in the Prescott area.

2019 Environmental Scholarship presentation. Left to right: Sue Drown (PAS president), Bonnie Pranter (scholarship committee), Natasha Ricio (scholarship awardee), Barb Stewart, Mary Trevor (scholarship committee), Laura Rhoden (PAS treasurer). Photo by Toni Kaus.

A Remembrance: Barb Stewart
by Mary Trevor

Barb Stewart, an avid birder and longtime supporter of Prescott Audubon, died September 24, 2025. She was 89. Many Lady Birders will remember Barb from the earlier years of the Monday Ladies, and in more recent years, from trips out Perkinsville Road in Chino Valley to support the  bird-a-thon. Barb was a big supporter of Audubon Adventures and other PAS education projects. The annual Monday Ladies’ bird-a-thon outing was her most public way of engaging.

I first met Barb in 1995, in one of Bonnie Pranter’s Yapapai College birding classes. She already was an experienced birder, but wanted to learn about southwestern birds, and in those days, YC offered short courses with field trips all over Arizona. Bonnie remembered:   “My biggest remembrances are, of course, our birding/exploring trips with Kathy Wingert. What fun we had tootling around the state, camping, birding, laughing as we went. Barb was always the driver, I was the planner, Kathy was the navigator. We made a good team! We all enjoyed exploring the backroads and hidden sites to find whatever birds and other wildlife we could chance upon. We also went far afield a few times--a favorite was South Texas.  That one ranks as one of my most favorite birding trips ever.” 

I was  very much a “baby birder” in the mid-90’s and Barb was an early mentor, introducing me to Cornell’s Project Feeder Watch and helping me set up my own backyard feeder stations. “As long as you have water,” she’d say, “you’ll have birds!” How right she was. We would share Feeder Watch sightings and data for many years, as well as Christmas Bird Counts. 

I took over the chair of the PAS’s scholarship committee in 2015, the 10th year of the environmental scholarship. I needed to increase the committee’s size and Barb was an enthusiastic recruit. The following year the committee started awarding the scholarship to college students, and Barb brought an understanding of that population and of science and the environment. (She had worked as a lab tech at both Stanford and U.C. Berkeley.) She and the other committee members helped to shape the evaluation criteria and to revise and update it over the years. She continued on the committee until 2021, always an insightful and committed member.

Birding was only one of Barb’s many, many interests, and over the years, Toni and I were fortunate to have shared birding and geology field trips, paddled local lakes and western rivers, and visited Mexico with Barb and her husband, Pete. I will miss her a lot, and feel grateful to have been among her legion of friends for over 30 years.

For more about Barb Stewart’s life, here’s a link to the obituary that was published in the Daily Courier:    Barb Stewart