This spring, the Birdtastic Four decided to team up with Nolde Forest to help the community. We had our team leader, Kyle, get in contact with a park ranger at Nolde to begin this process. Our service revolved around a nationwide bird migration project that is done each year. We also had the opportunity of helping with any outstanding and time-consuming projects that need to be completed for future events.
The Birdtastic Four attended a training session in February. The session was essential in order to learn the specifics for the migration project. The rangers at Nolde conducting this training began by teaching us the basics of identifying birds based on several factors including size, color, and shape of physical attributes. They also showed us other unique ways to identify birds. The additional ways were by the sounds the birds make and the way they eat. Some birds grab a piece of food, fly to a nearby tree, and then eat it, while others may sit at the feeder for minutes at a time.
The next step of training was learning the proper way to track the birds. Since this is an international process done each year, it is important to be accurate and consistent. They have several bird watching days, each are a consecutive two days in the same week. Volunteers who come write the amount of each bird that was seen at the same time. This is vital to the project, because without it, the same bird will be counted numerous times. It can be difficult to identify and count the amount of the same bird because they move frequently, but it gets easier with time. We are glad the four of us could work together to help keep track of each type of bird.
A lot can be learned from the migration patterns of birds. The park rangers explained that many environmental issues can be identified, such as climate change. Many birds naturally migrate to warmer climates during the winter. If the seasons to shift and overtime North America’s winters are warmer, they do not have to migrate quite as far.
The final part of the Birdtastic Four’s service component involved many small tasks to help the rangers at Nolde. Late March, our group visited a beautiful mansion on the grounds that is now used as offices for the park rangers. The day our group attended the mansion, we were accompanied by two other groups to help complete similar tasks. The park ranger asked us to test old markers and crayons to see which ones should be thrown away. She stated that if she assigns this task to the staff, they keep almost all of them in order to be environmentally conscious. We also cut out paper turtles and paper masks for a large Day of the Dead event which is held each year for children. The last task we worked on that day was rolling out Crayola Model Magic clay and imprinting skulls patterns into it for the Day of the Dead event. Out of all the tasks, this was the most fun. Although the tasks all seemed tedious at times, we were able to help the park rangers at Nolde Forest. It became very important to us as we began to realize that Nolde, along with other organizations, are underfunded and without volunteering they can’t provide as much for the park and the community.
Overall, the Birdtastc Four had a terrific time. We as a group, all feel that our time volunteering was noticeably impactful. It was a memorable experience that provided a great bit of knowledge that may become useful in the future. All and all, it was an awesome time!
