Calendar Note: North Alabama Birding Festival May 4-6, 2007

Decatur, Alabama

Picked up a brochure for this activities when we visited Natural Bridge. There will be talks, classes, field trips and an expo. Most require pre-registration--except for the expo at Rhodes Ferry Park, which is open to the public and free. Much as I would love to, I can't go because of end-of-the-year concerts at work. If you go, please let me know what it is like.

GBBC Update

We have a mockingbird haunting our deck today--but probably not the 'headless' one shown below. He's shooing away all the birds trying to visit the feeder. I saw him slam into a redwing blackbird so hard that feathers flew. He's definitely hindering our bird counting. This afternoon he's a bit distracted. He's sitting on the sill of the picture window trying to catch the tiny rainbows made by the solar rainbow maker on that window. It's so nice to have a sunny day!

Great Backyard Bird Count, North America

Today is the first day of the Great Backyard Bird Count.
Alabama has wonderful birds and this event is a great way to begin learning about them.
As their website says, "It's fun, it's free, it takes as little as 15 minutes--and it helps the birds."

I participate in Project Feederwatch, counting birds at my feeders two days a week November through April. I see a minimum of 20 different species of birds! My relatives in Colorado are very jealous. (When I was a stay-at-home mom and needed an ego boost to compete with the supermoms, I would say I did volunteer work for Cornell.)

The GBBC is a great family activity. My children participated to earn scout badges--and still recognize most of the birds they learned about. I like to participate because I can count anywhere, not just my designated Feederwatch area. One year, my daughter and I were in Gadsden for All-State Orchestra during GBBC. I had a good time trying to identify and count the waterfowl there.