A birds eye view of our avian feathered friends
Valley Charities Backyard Birding Challenge partnership with Alaska WildBird Rehabilitation Center
Valley Charities, through its turn-A-leaf Thrift Store hosted its third year of the Backyard Birding Challenge. This year we partnered with the Alaska WildBird Rehabilitation Center to create a Mat-Su Community Partnership Project. The number of participants signing up grow each year. Last year turn-A-leaf Thrift Store signed up 33 kids. This year, an amazing 71 kids signed up for the challenge.
Above Photo | The Backyard Birding Challenge participants Paloma and Jayvyn, far left, the Young family, and Poppy, far right.
The goal of Valley Charities Backyard Birding Challenge was to take part in a fun outdoor learning activity for kids which introduces birding about some of Alaska’s backyard birds. Levi Chord, manager of turn-A-leaf Thrift Store and his staff met an amazing 71 children that signed up and participated in the Backyard Birding Challenge. The turn-A-leaf staff passed out a birding journal to find 7 of 12 birds listed in the book. The Backyard Birding Challenge started in June and went through the beginning of September. For participating, each child received an explorer hat, vest, explorer bag and binoculars. All the participants in the Backyard Birding Challenge were invited to attend an educational party at the Alaska WildBird Rehabilitation Center.
THE MAIN EVENT
Saturday, September 9th was a day that won’t soon be forgotten for kids and parents alike who were introduced to the Alaska WildBird Rehabilitation Center in Houston, Alaska. Shannon Jensen is the Executive Director of the Center. With her compassion to care for animals, she teaches and provides outreach information to the Mat-Su community on and away from the center.
For intermission, everyone gathered together to play a fun game of 'Stealth'.
Jayvyn, Paloma, Poppy, and the Young family arrived bright eyed and smiling and left with more information about Alaska birds. The kids have fun memories to look back on in the days ahead, and also, maybe, even made some new friends as well. For intermission, Ben, Shannon’s son, and Grace conducted a fun activity, the Stealth game. The game is a bird centric game that teaches kids the importance of freezing to camouflage themselves from predators. To play, kids, and parents lined up at one end of the parking lot while a caller was positioned at the opposite side. The caller counts, out loud, down from 5 to 1. While the caller is turned around and counting participants run as fast and far as they can during the count to reach the caller. After the caller counts to 1, participants have to stop and freeze before the caller sees them moving. Anyone who is spotted still moving, would have to go back to the starting position.
And sometimes.... we might need a little help from our friends.
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