REMINDER: Help make birds count at Bird Fest this weekend!
The Burien Birdfest is scheduled for this Saturday, Feb. 18, and The Great International Backyard Bird Count will be all weekend.
Do you want to learn what birds are in your backyard? Do you want to help scientists take a snapshot of their populations? You can do both this weekend at Bird Fest. The event goes from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Saturday at the Burien Community Center and offers families, friends and neighbors an opportunity to learn about their local birds while participating in the annual Great Backyard Bird Count.
Family and bird-friendly activities will include hourly walks and counts, easy identification tools, touching real bird skins, dissecting owl pellets, learning how you can help at home or on Earth Day with local beach cleanups, crafting a pair of binoculars and other activities for children, and opportunities to learn about local environmental organizations.
Bird Fest is co-sponsored locally by the Environmental Science Center, Burien Parks and Recreation, Bob and Chestine Edgar, Sustainable Burien, Wild Birds Unlimited, Seattle Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation. It was created to promote the Great Backyard Bird Count, which Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society. This was the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time. Now, more than 160,000 people of all ages and walks of life worldwide join the four-day count each Feb. to create an annual snapshot of the distribution and abundance of birds.
Citizens can become scientists for as little as 15 minutes on one or more days from Friday Feb. 17 through Sunday Feb. 20 and enter their data online. They can also come to Bird Fest on Saturday Feb. 18 and participate in hourly counts. Kharli Rose is the Environmental Science Center’s newest, bird-loving staff member and will leads counts and share naturalist tips from training at Seward Park Audubon Center. She has just returned from a trip to New Zealand and added 50 new birds to her life list. Kharli can help you start your own bird list and make sure your count counts on Saturday.
For more information, details and to REGISTER for Bird Fest, please visit www.EnvScienceCenter.org or call 206-248-4266
For more information on the Great Backyard Bird Count, please visit www.Birdcount.org.