The Year of the Bird has almost come to an end. As we finish out 2018, the last monthly call to action is about thanks and sharing your love of birds this holiday season with the people in your life. Over the past year, The Year of the Bird has focused on planting native plants, avoiding plastic, participating in community science, making your home bird-friendly, and many more ways to help bird populations around the world. Thank you for participating! During this holiday season, share the ways you love birds with those around you. This could be done in many forms, such as taking someone on a bird walk, sharing birding photography, gifting a bird-related present, or donating to a conservation group. Although the year is coming to an end, supporting healthy bird populations should not. End this year by sharing with others the joys birds bring to you.
November’s call to action in this Year of the Bird is to go on an assignment with National Geographic’s Share Your Shot—a storytelling community where photographers can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Share your photography to tell the story of the birds in your world.
This action will continue the entire month of November! It is not a contest, but a participatory storytelling assignment. Birding photography has become key entry point to nature and continues to grow in popularity. In 1908 National Geographic Magazine published an article imploring sportsmen to switch their rifles for cameras. “Shooting” wildlife through a lens was then a novel idea that transformed the way naturalists observe and appreciate nature. The 1908 article was a pivotal point in our appreciation of birds for their own sake and for their conservation. It is that idea we celebrate with this month’s call to action—Share Your Shot (so join the fun)!
If you haven’t already heard, 2018 is Year of the Bird! The National Geographic Society is celebrating the centenary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with a year-long celebration of birds. Dozens of Year of the Bird partners, including Klamath Bird Observatory, are coordinating Year of the Bird activities.
KBO’s Wings and Wine Gala is this Sunday. Please join us for a beautiful fall afternoon under the oak trees at Grizzly Peak Winery. More information about the event and buying tickets can be found on our WINGS AND WINE GALA WEBPAGE.
As a Year of the Bird event, our 2018 Wings and Wine Gala celebrates the things we can all do to support bird conservation, every day. We will be feature our internship program by raising money this critical professional education. Over the past 20 years, Klamath Bird Observatory has hosted more than 250 volunteer student interns from all over the world. These inspiring bird conservationists have gone on to work with non-governmental organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions where they make significant contributions to bird conservation. Come to our Wings and Wine Gala and help us grow the next generation of bird conservationists.
The Gala’s auction times are listed online and you can start you bidding now by CLICKING HERE.
We look forward to seeing you this Sunday as we celebrate the Year of the Bird through education, storytelling, science, and conservation.
Our Call to Action this September in the Year of the Bird is to do everything we can to help birds have a safe migration this fall. Each year, billions of birds migrate north in the spring and south in the fall. Along the way, though, they now face all sorts of human-made challenges. Whether it be from vast expanses of concrete to invisible windows and confusing artificial lights, the number of migrating birds that die every year is estimated to be as many as 1 billion.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Making windows bird-safe, turning off your lights, planting native plants, encouraging bird-friendly architecture in your community—these are all ways you can help birds have a safer migration. So for September, our Year of the Bird ask is to do everything you can to help birds have a safe migration this fall. You can read more about how to do this and how lights and windows pose dangers to migrating birds in the featured Year of the Bird post and KBO info handouts below.
And check out KBO’s info handouts: Reducing Bird Collisions with Windows, Birdify Your Yard, and Cats and Wildlife—available at our website (see link below).
2018 is Year of the Bird! The National Geographic Society is celebrating the centenary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with a year-long celebration of birds. Dozens of Year of the Bird partners, including Klamath Bird Observatory, are coordinating Year of the Bird activities.
The Year of the Bird July call to action is to take a child into nature. Even with school out, summer is a great time to learn! Spending time with children outside, and discovering new things, may spark a lifelong passion and value of environmental stewardship—plus it’s an easy and cheap venue for fun!
Today, children are spending less and less time outdoors. A Nature Conservancy poll showed that only about 10% of kids spend time outside every day. Studies have shown that bird watching and other outdoor recreation activity can help kids build creativity, attention span, confidence, and happier and healthier lives.
If you haven’t already heard, 2018 is Year of the Bird! The National Geographic Society is celebrating the centenary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with a year-long celebration of birds. Dozens of Year of the Bird partners, including Klamath Bird Observatory, are coordinating Year of the Bird activities.
It is June in the Year of the Bird and this month’s Call to Action is to Skip the Plastic. Our use of plastics has far out-stripped our ability and motivation to keep it out of natural environments. The accumulation of discarded plastic is both plain to see and nearly invisible almost everywhere, creating an acute problem for all life on Earth.
But we are in a time of change—there is real traction around this issue at the individual level and among policy makers and industry leaders. Innovators are offering solutions to municipal waste management and creative ways to repurpose trash.
This month, Year of the Bird spotlights this issue because of the acute challenge it presents to bird conservation. From the National Geographic Society’s Call to Action …
Why is plastic a problem for birds?
• The threat to birds is severe: 90 percent of seabirds eat plastic and virtually every one will be consuming it by 2050. Flesh-footed Shearwaters eat more plastic as a proportion of their body mass than any other marine animal.
• The problem is growing: Scientists have been tracking plastic ingestion by seabirds for decades. In 1960, plastic was found in the stomachs of fewer than five percent, but by 1980, it had jumped to 80 percent. World plastic production has increased exponentially from 2.3 million tons in 1950 to 162 million in 1993 to 448 million by 2015!
How can we all help solve the problem?
• Shop with reusable bags. Shoppers in the United States use almost one plastic bag per resident per day. Shoppers in Denmark use an average of four per year.
• Recycle—this old idea is still far from common place. The United States recycles just 9 percent of its plastic trash.
• Properly dispose of your own trash and pick up litter when you can. Join or organize a community park or beach clean-up.
• Do not purchase plastic bottles and start carrying a reusable straw. Bottles take 450 years to biodegrade.
• Avoid products with plastic packaging and buy in bulk. The largest market for plastics today is packaging materials—most of it never gets recycled or incinerated.
To learn more about this tragic problem and what we can all do to help solve it …
If you haven’t already heard, 2018 is Year of the Bird! The National Geographic Society is celebrating the centenary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with a year-long celebration of birds. Dozens of Year of the Bird partners, including Klamath Bird Observatory, are coordinating Year of the Bird activities.
It’s May in the Year of the Bird and our call to action is Global Big Day! Saturday May 5th is the day people all over the world will be watching birds and putting them on the world map via eBird.
What to do: Look for birds and report what you find at eBird.org in this exciting 24-hour quest to collectively record as many bird species as possible across the world.
How to do it: Watch birds on May 5th –any time from midnight to midnight in your local time zone. It’s that simple. You don’t need to be a bird expert, or go out all day long.
• Get an eBird account if you don’t already have one: eBird is a worldwide bird checklist program used by hundreds of thousands of birders. It’s what allows us to compile everyone’s sightings into a single massive Global Big Day list—while at the same time collecting the data for scientists to use to better understand birds. It’s free. Log your sightings on the eBird website or download the eBird app, for maximum ease-of-use.
• Watch the sightings roll in: During the day, keep an eye on how the lists are growing in different parts of the world. Follow along with sightings from more than 150 countries, including the Cornell Lab’s Team Sapsucker in Colombia, Honduras, and California. Stats will be updated in real-time on our Global Big Day page.
Pro Birder Tips for Big Day Success:
• Explore eBird Hotspots near you.
• Put your birding plans on the worldwide Global Big Day map.
• Get together with friends and set a goal for your birding—most unusual species? Biggest flock? All the species in your favorite family? The possibilities are endless.
• Take photos and add them to your checklist—they might end up on the Global Big Day page!
Why do it?
• Put your birds on the map! Your sightings become part of a global snapshot that helps track the numbers, health, and movements of birds for scientists and conservationists.
• It helps other birders: your data feeds migration forecasts, species checklists, and hotspot maps that are free for all.
• 20,000 bird watchers around the world will be on a 24-hour birding binge; count yourself in their ranks.
• In 2017, bird watchers recorded an incredible 65% of all the bird species on the planet. Can we set a new record?
And don’t miss World Migratory Bird Day! There are 1,200 events happening around the world in 200 cities on Saturday May 12, including two KBO is part of—Rogue Valley Bird Day and the Global Migratory Bird Day Birdwatching Field Trip in Shasta Valley Wildlife Area.
Of course the invaluable citizen science wonder that is eBird is bigger than Global Big Day—watch the birds any day and let your observations add to our body of knowledge, empowering bird conservation science through eBird. Every bird counts so count all your birds!
It’s Year of the Bird April! This month’s call to action is to both celebrate the Migratory Bird Treaty Act’s century of success and raise concern about recent and abrupt changes to it. eBird Northwest has published a great article about this important law that has influenced bird and habitat conservation in many ways.
The Year of the Bird’s Call to Action for the month of March is to raise awareness of the value of landscaping with native plants. Creating a bird-friendly habitat in yards featuring native plants is a great way to help birds facing changes in their natural habitats. Planting native plant species in your yard, garden, patio, or balcony can create a vital recharging station for birds passing through and even a sanctuary for nesting birds. Having more birds will help with garden pests naturally and the native plants will require much less watering. March might be a little early for planting but not too early for planning ahead to birdify your yard.
eBird Northwest has just posted an article titled Year of the Bird: March Monthly Action with more information about including bird-friendly native plants in our “habitats”. The article includes a link to the National Audubon Society’s Plants for Birds webpage and their Native Plant Finder Database with tips for planning a bird-friendly landscape.
If you haven’t already heard, 2018 is Year of the Bird! The National Geographic Society is celebrating the centenary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with a year-long celebration of birds. Dozens of Year of the Bird partners, including Klamath Bird Observatory, are coordinating Year of the Bird activities.
The National Geographic Society, in partnership with National Audubon Society, Birdlife International, and The Cornell Lab of Ornithology have proclaimed 2018 as the Year of the Bird. The Year of the Bird marks 100 years of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—the most powerful and important bird-protection law ever passed. The Year of the Bird will celebrate the wonder of our feathered friends and provide an opportunity for people everywhere to recommit themselves to protecting birds. The Year of the Bird will be 12 months of storytelling, science, and conservation aimed at heightening public awareness of birds and the importance of protecting them.
KBO, many other organizations, and people all around the world are committing to help protect birds today and for the next hundred years. Everyone can join in and be a part of the #YearoftheBird! National Geographic will be highlighting simple actions you can take part in each month to make a difference for birds—visit their website (see link below) to read more about this special year. Another wonderful resource is the All About Birds website’s “6 Resolutions To Help You #BirdYourWorld In 2018” (see link below). KBO will post news and updates of these actions and how to stay involved throughout the year through our Call Note blog and at eBird Northwest.
As Thomas Lovejoy, biologist and “godfather of biodiversity” once stated: “If you take care of the birds, you take care of most of the environmental problems in the world.”
If you haven’t already heard, 2018 is Year of the Bird! The National Geographic Society is celebrating the centenary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with a year-long celebration of birds. Dozens of Year of the Bird partners, including Klamath Bird Observatory, are coordinating Year of the Bird activities.
It’s May in the 
