Bird sightings can happen anywhere whether you’re looking out your kitchen window or traveling to far-away places. But can you actually tell one from another? Don’t despair, there are clues you can use to identify many species. Cover the art and science of bird identification when you discuss such field marks as overall size and shape, bill structure, basic/alternative plumage, sex differences, distinctive postures when feeding or resting and much more. Learn a process to identify birds that includes their behaviors, the time of day, the time of the year and the locations seen. Leave with the visual skills and auditory skills to enhance your enjoyment of the avian world around you.
Dates: April 26 – May 3, 2019
Meets: 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM
Location: Creutzburg Center 200
Instructor: Phil Witmer
$59.00 Course Fee
Learn the joys of watching birds in your backyard and the keys to identifying the birds you see. Explore techniques for attracting a wide variety of birds, methods for providing a safe habitat for our feathered friends and tools for enhancing the experience.
Dates: April 5-12, 2019
Meets: 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM
Location: Creutzburg Center 200
Instructor: Phil Witmer
$59.00 Course Fee
This weekend marks the annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), a four-day event that makes “citizen scientists” out of bird watchers and nature lovers across North America. The campaign is part of a broad effort to keep tabs on the continent’s bird populations, using volunteers of all ages and backgrounds to supplement more formal research.
Create a beautiful bird and butterfly friendly garden sanctuary by learning about which plants and shrubs are most likely to entice them. The principles are simple. Flowers provide nectar and seeds, trees and shrubs provide nuts, berries, nesting sites and shelter. These flowers, shrubs and trees have the added benefit of providing interesting textures and bright colors to your landscape. With tips on choosing the right plants you’ll see how easy it is to have a yard that welcomes wildlife.
March 11, 2019
10:00 AM to 12 N
Creutzburg Center 200
Instructor: Andrea Hallmark
$45.00 Course Fee
Climate change is having devastating effects on our environment, from rising sea levels to severe weather. Here’s one effect that scientists didn’t anticipate, however: murderous, brain-eating birds.
JEFFREY AND SHIRLEY Caldwell have been attracting birds for 25 years with carefully tended backyard feeders. But the lifelong Erie, Pennsylvania, residents have never seen a creature so wondrous as the half-vermillion, half-taupe cardinal—its colors split right down the middle—that first showed up a few weeks ago in the dawn redwood tree 10 yards from their home.
This interactive experience is perfect for bird lovers of all ages! Participants can visit the zoo to count birds in order to help create a real-time snapshot of where birds are! The Great Backyard Bird Count takes place across the country, and helps avian researchers gather information to better protect wild birds for the future!
Friday, February 15th from 10:30am-12pm Saturday, February 16th from 10:30am-12pm Sunday, February 17th from 10:30am-12pm
The Great Backyard Bird Count Workshop is a free workshop hosted on February 6 by the Newtown Township’s Environmental Advisory Committee (EAC). Bird watchers of all ages and skills can come to learn how to count birds and prepare for the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC).
The GBBC is a free, fun event from February 15 to 18 that aims to better understand and capture a snaposhot of bird populations around the world while engaging bird watchers in a common goal. Every bird watcher is asked to count birds for at least fifteen minutes during the four-day event and report their findings to www.birdcount.org.
Philip Witmer will host the workshop at Newtown Township Building 1st Floor, 209 Bishop Hollow Road from 6-8pm. Whether you have years of experience or would like to try bird watching for the first time, everyone is invited to join.
