What can I say? Apparently I’m not very good at blogging. I thought it would be so easy to sit down at least once a week and type up a little update about what’s been going on with the birds. Obviously I was wrong. Well, let’s see if I can be a bit better…for a little while at least.
Since my last post (forever and a day ago) we have been pretty busy. The birds make two daily appearances in the Draper Natural History Museum Thursday through Sunday (at the moment those are the only days we’re open). It’s a chance for guests of the Center to see them up close and learn about our birds—why we have them, what they would be doing in the wild, that sort of thing. It’s our slow season so most days we only interact with a dozen or so folks, but it’s the best part of my job—no, really! I love teaching people about the birds, that’s why I’m an educator instead of a rehabber or zoo keeper.
The program is getting more notice and we’ve now had several programs for local schools. Twice the biology teachers from Cody High School have brought their students over for programs. We joined up with Dr. Charles Preston, Founding Curator of the Draper, and did an entire program on raptors for the kids. Dr. Preston discussed his golden eagle research and then we brought out the birds to give the students a natural history lesson on the major raptors in our area. It was great fun!
We also took the birds on the road. They traveled ALL the way across town to an elementary school ;0) I love that I can say that all the kids in that school were able to see the birds. We broke the kids into three groups by their ages and did programs specifically geared toward their levels all about our amazing birds. It was a fantastic day for us and the teachers and students seemed to really appreciate that they saw something special.
Above are a few photos from our trip to Sunset Elementary School. I don’t know the name of the photographer, we’re still trying to find out who he is, but he took amazing shots!
Our upcoming events include a public FREE program at Powell Valley Community Education on March 5th and a presentation for our local Audubon group ono April 12th. Stay tuned for more! I promise to do better at blogging ;0)
