~~~~~~ Senior Solutions ~~~~~~
A successful activity is one that is enjoyable, exercises the mind, body, and senses, and serves a purpose. Finding one that engages all systems but is not extremely demanding can be difficult. I recently stumbled upon one of these hard to find interactive events. It was an unconscious integration of physical and mental functioning, and provided a sense of value and accomplishment.
The Great Backyard Bird Count is a jointly sponsored event by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society. This year’s event was held February 15-18, 2008. It’s an opportunity for everyone no matter what skill level, to join in with thousands of other participants across the country to count birds. You could bird count for as little as 15 minutes or the entire 3 days. When finished, bird tallies were uploaded through the web site. (If you’ve never heard of this event, I highly recommend it! See here for details: http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/
I thought it would be an entertaining way to spend some time with one of my clients. We would get some walking exercise in, some fresh air and sunshine, be helping to gather important data about birds in our area, and learning how to make bird identifications at the same time. We packed up a set of binoculars, a clipboard and pencil, bottled water, and a couple of books to help us identify the birds.
The weather couldn’t have been more perfect here for birding. In about an hour and a half we were able to identify: 1 adult Brown Pelican, 1 juvenile Brown Pelican, 1 Caspian Tern, 2 White Ibis, 5 Double Crested Cormorants, 2 Blue Jays, and 1 Broad Winged Hawk.
As you can see, it was a beautiful day on the shores of Tampa Bay, and my birding buddy was fully engaged in the task at hand. As a bonus, we also got to watch a live conch moving along in the sand in the shallow water, and hundreds of minnows swimming around right underneath where the sea gulls were sitting. My birding buddy and I decided the birds must have had full bellies-otherwise those minnows wouldn’t have been swimming so close by.