The Potomac Valley Audubon Society’s monthly evening program for January will feature a presentation about the Bluebird Trail at Antietam National Battlefield.

The program will be held Wednesday, Jan. 8 in Shepherd University’s Student Center on North King Street in Shepherdstown. It will be held in the center’s second floor Cumberland Room, and will begin at 7 p.m. Admission is free and everyone is welcome to attend.

The speaker will be Judith Lilga, a retired educator and past president of the Washington County MD Bird Club who has assisted with monitoring of Antietam Bluebird Trail.

The Antietam Trail is an excellent example of a highly successful, citizen-led, all-volunteer conservation initiative.

The trail is one of the oldest Bluebird trails on the East Coast. It was established in 1979 by Sharpsburg Md. residents Mark and Jean Raabe, who sought and received the National Park Service’s blessing for the project.

The Raabes have continued to develop and maintain the trail throughout its history.

Today, it includes 100 paired nest boxes that stretch along the battlefield’s tour roads from Miller’s Cornfield at the north end of the battlefield to Burnside Bridge at the south end.

By the close of the 2012 nesting season, these boxes had fledged at total of 8,819 Bluebirds over the last 33 years..