Bird Watchers! Seniors! Caregivers! Senior Centers! Educators! Parents and Children!
Bird Watchers! Seniors! Caregivers! Senior Centers! Educators! Parents and Children!
2011 Great Backyard Bird Count is coming!
Senior Solutions of Pinellas County will be encouraging people of all ages to participate in the upcoming annual bird counting project. This activity is useful, educational, and most importantly, helpful in assessing the North American bird populations. It is a unified effort between Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Audubon Society, Bird Studies Canada, and sponsorship from Wild Birds Unlimited.
Having experienced the delight of engaging my clients in this project, I know it is an excellent way to generate enthusiasm and excitement –despite age related ailments including dementia! It’s “Good Medicine”! Therefore, again this year, I have registered to be a Great Backyard Bird Count Ambassador, and I will encourage retirement communities and care facilities to participate in this annual event.
The event is FREE. Results are sent in by computer, and very little preparation is involved. If you have as little as 15 minutes of free time, YOU can help!
PLEASE HELP count the birds again this year! It will be especially important to help understand the results of this years Gulf Oil Spill on local and migrating bird populations.
To learn more about this great event. Get involved, spend some time with your senior loved ones, have fun together and help make a difference!
Jane D. Ogilvie Senior Care Consultant
Get Ready for the 2009 Great Back Yard Bird Count.
Last year I discovered what a terrific opportunity the Annual Backyard Bird Count was to get one of my care management clients outside to participate in something that thousands of others across the country were doing to help keep track of birds here in the United States. After we turned in our tally sheets, I was able to download a certificate of appreciation and personalize it with my client’s name. It was a beautiful certificate to look at and it made the client feel special.
It’s a perfect way to awaken the senses, get some fresh air (weather permitting), stimulate neural pathways that might not get used too frequently, and focus on something besides health problems. This activity was such a positive experience that I wrote about it here on my web site, and added the link to it. This year I’ve decided to be a “Volunteer Ambassador” for the event itself, which means I’ll do what I can to make others aware of the Bird Count so they can enjoy it too!
You will find everything you need to know about how to participate in the bird count on the web site @ http://www.birdsource.org
The Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology have partnered up to create this wonderful event. The Great Backyard Bird Count web site is full of interesting facts and figures related to individual species of birds, including their usual habitat, food sources, migratory behaviors, and so much more. Through the site you can hear birdcalls and see photos of common and rare species that were discovered because of other Backyard Bird Counters in 2008! Last year Bird Count participants reported seeing 12 birds in locations where they’re usually not found or are rarely seen. You can read about it on this page:
http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/08Highlights
For those interested in environmental issues and the results of changes related to global warming, participating in the Bird Count can be extremely meaningful as well. Whatever time you devote to counting birds in your yard will help provide valuable data to help explain the effects temperature changes, various types of pollution, rainfall fluctuations, and disappearing food sources are having upon bird populations.
The Great Backyard Bird Count is an activity for people of ALL ages! Get involved in something bigger than yourself, enjoy it, and try to help make the world a better place to live!
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.