Bird School Project Big Day!

In the birding world, there is an event known to all birders as one of the ultimate (and slightly competitive) challenges--It is called a Big Day. Many times throughout the year, birders head out in the wee hours of the morning on a pre-determined day in search of the most amount of species that they can see in 24 hours. Records are set and broken as birding becomes more popular and as changing climate patterns bring birds to more unlikely regions year after year. In fact, a quartet of birders from Louisiana State University just broke the world record with finding 354 species in one day in Peru this past October! Check out their website, photos, and history of the Big Day at
http://www.lsubigday.org/#!documentary/ck0q

A birding Big Day could certainly be in store for the Bird School Project in the near future. But today, the Bird School project took on another type of Big Day--to teach the most amount of students possible in one school day. Our previous record was 80 students when we visited 2 schools in a single day in the bay area. On this past Monday, we shattered the record with 120 students. But today, we continued our impact with 200 students in one day!!!

We finished our time in Santa Cruz last week and taught on Monday and Tuesday this week in Salinas. We worked with the kindergartners and 1st graders at La Joya elementary school and then today at Gavilan View middle school. Thankfully, we have received assistance from Darrow's childhood friend and fellow UCSC alum--Benny Jacobs-Schwartz. Benny has worked with professional bird researchers on the east coast, the midwest, and even in Costa Rica. He has also worked with kids for the past three summers at Camp Tawonga as a nature educator and wilderness leader. He is a perfect addition to the bird school team for this week and has been a great help!

Benny working with kindergartners at La Joya 

Perks of working at school--Chocolate milk!

Checking out the Song Sparrows and Horned Larks (!)

Getting down to notice the Black and white throat
bands of the Killdeer!

Taking notes on our observations

He was actually this excited to learn about the birds!

A sea of students

Working with these schools has been incredible. The schools are underfunded, the majority of students have free and reduced lunch, and at the same time, they are beyond thankful for our visit. They were attentive, asked great questions, and many asked us how they could get more involved. Things like, "this is actually pretty cool!", "I really like doing this!", and "I can do this for work?!" are simple yet powerful things to hear form these kids. The more we work with students, the more we are able to see our impact on students and see how important this is for students.

Tomorrow, we will begin working with Carmel middle school for the next three days. They have a 5 acre habitat dedicated to bird programming and nature education. We are looking forward to it and will report back soon!