The Wonders of Winter Wings
On Saturday February 15th, DNDA and the Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) Team at Camp Long hosted our second collaborative community event for youth and families named ‘Winter Wings’!
Winter Wings was a part of celebrating the weekend of the Backyard Bird Count and to provide community fun and engaging opportunities to get folks out to the amazing trails of Camp Long! Similar to the goals of the Backyard Bird Count, small groups lead by SPR’s Environmental Education Team and Seattle Urban Nature (SUN) Guides worked together to identify, count, and submit bird counts to help scientists better understand and protect birds around the world!It was especially joyous to have community events at Camp Long as this was the first community event at the Park after the fire to the Environmental Learning Center. We were delighted to see over 60 people interested in attending the event, and had 30 people all together gather in a flock of excitement to connect with Camp Long and our feathered friends!
A photo of a group of people walking along the trails of Camp Long. Nicole Parish-Andrews from Seattle Parks and Recreation’s Environmental Education Team leads the group. Nicole, dressed in a blue coat and white beanie hat looks towards where a young participant in the group is pointing.
The SPR Environmental Education Team created a check list and scavenger sheet, indicating the different birds in our Coast Salish/Seattle urban nature environment. Each group was able to borrow binoculars, if needed, and then the groups were led by Seattle Urban Nature (SUN) Guides, SPR Staff, and DNDA Staff. Groups were led around in different directions, pausing in different locations to look for and listen to birds. Guides and the group participants used their eyes and binoculars to look for clues to identify birds using visual clues like colors, size, and wing shapes. Our budding bird scientists also used their hearing to identify calls, and were assisted by phone applications, like eBird, that listen to bird calls around you/the group and help to investigate birds that may not always be visible. The groups also used the scavenger hunt sheets with pictures of birds and names to check them off as they go!
In the above photos, the left photo shows Jules Hepp, DNDA’s Environmental Education Coordinator with a group holding the checklist of different birds out as the group looks at their own sheets to see if there are matches to what the group is seeing and hearing. In the right photo, Nicole Parish-Andrews from Seattle Parks and Recreation’s Environmental Education Team holds up her phone using eBird to lead the group through how to use the technology to identify birds.
As the birding groups came back, we shared what birds we saw – and how many! We found: Chickadees, Dark-eyed Juncos, American Crows, Anna’s Hummingbirds, a Piliated Woodpecker, and Red-breasted Nuthatch. Overall, we all found the most crows, followed by chickadees and juncos in a close second tie, and only one or two identified hummingbirds, piliated woodpecker, and hearing our nuthatch friends twice in different locations. After the groups returned, they also got a chance to engage with the DNDA Teaching Artist facilitated painting and an EcoArt’s craft. Our EcoArt’s craft used recycled and upcycled paper bags to turn into wings. Once all of the teams came back together, we talked about what we learned and found together.
A group mural is pictured above on the left, where participants used watercolors on a large sheet of paper to paint and create birds and other feathered and winged Beings, and their food and habitats! On the right side, the paper bag wing project is pictured – showing how people used markers, paper scraps, and glue!
Overall DNDA, the SPR Environmental Education Team, and our community members present all had such a fun time! We were excited to see 30 participants come out – many of whom had not been to Camp Long before. In that regard, we also succeeded in our collective hope to have community members come to Camp Long! We are also grateful to the many people who expressed how much they enjoyed coming out and complemented both SPR and DNDA alike for hosting another lovely and engaging event!
Our Winter Wings team is pictured above featuring DNDA Teaching Artist (April) and Staff (Jules) and SPR Environmental Education team of Seattle Urban Nature Guides and Community Naturalist (Nicole). The group is smiling and some hold up the tools used – scavenger identification, binoculars, and a laminated identification guide for looking for birds.
We want to extend a huge thanks and gratitude to everyone who was able to make it out for Winter Wings! Of course, we are so incredibly lucky and appreciative for the time and energy of our SPR Environmental Education Team including Nicole Parish-Andrews and the SUN Guides who led and engaged people connecting to and learning about the birds of our area and at Camp Long. We would also like to give a big shout out to our amazing DNDA Teaching Artist present – April Alley for her time and energy in making such a fun activity possible! We hope to have more Camp Long family and community events upcoming — we expect to do more in the future! In the meantime, if you and your family are interested in connecting to nature and art, please consider our EcoArts Camp for kids ages 7-12 from April 14th-18th at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center! EcoArts Spring Nature Camp is the ideal way to explore the wonders of nature through creative art projects, learn about the environment in a fun and engaging way, develop new skills like plant identification, and cooking, make new friends and practice collaborating, and even do a field trip to Camp Long!
-Written by DNDA’s Environmental Education Coordinator Jules Hepp