#week 05

In Washington Wachira’s 2017 TED Talk, For the love of birds, he talks about how, much like humans, birds are just about everywhere on earth.  Where I live in Southern Ontario the winter sends much of the local wildlife down south or into hiding, but a selection of birds can be seen and heard year-round.

Birds are a great entryway point into learning about natural history.  Compared to plants and insects they’re a more recent evolutionary development and so much less diverse; learning all the bird species in your area is a more achievable goal, and there’s a long history of interest in birds, including in the context of natural history.

There are all kinds of bird resources available:

Audubon has a variety of guides including a field guide app and advice on binoculars and photography

Dendroica is an interactive site aimed at improving identification skills

Larkwire is a game-based bird sound learning tool

eBird is a bird-watching tool that helps you to organise, share, and access birding information

Merlin is a bird identification tool that helps you ID birds, using a key, sound, or photo

The Ontario Field Naturalist’s Toolchest has book recommendations (and more) for learning about birds and specific bird families, and iNaturalist is a good all-around nature identification resource, if you want a less focused resource (its app is very good for plants in particular).

While birds are everywhere and we can often see and hear them from inside of our homes, getting out to see them can be a little intimidating, especially if you’re a member of a less privileged group, for whom “intimidating” can mean dangerous. There are some different groups out there supporting diversity in birding and uniting like-minded people:

Black AF in STEM has been running Black Birders Week for the past two years and are active on social media year-round

Birdability works on making birding accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities and other health concerns through events and guides

Feminist Bird Club chapters promote inclusivity with a focus on the LGBTQIA+ community, BIPOC, and women

There’s a need for advocacy in birding, in support of diverse birders and in support of birds.

Cities tend not to be the focus of conservation efforts but they have a need for better design to enable just that.  Incorporating the natural world into our daily lives helps humans live better, receiving mental and physical health benefits.  Conservation-minded planning is also necessary in our cities in order to protect the wildlife that make our cities their home or merely pass through them. 

As things stand not all of the wildlife just passing through survives the experience.  Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) collects and freezes migratory birds killed from window collisions in Toronto; in the spring they lay them out in the rotunda of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), arranged in a pattern as they thaw before being donated to the museum.  The birds displayed number in the thousands.

In the day birds cannot see glass and night-time migrators can be disoriented by building lights. Through BirdSafe, FLAP educates and engages the public, involves volunteers with collecting and where possible rehabilitating birds, and disseminates bird-safe solutions for residential and commercial properties. 

Current bird-friendly development guidelines exist at a largely municipal level in Canada, which means that how well birds are protected varies from municipality to municipality and that some municipalities have not established guidelines.

Birds are everywhere, can be appreciated everywhere, and there is a need to protect them everywhere; they can be an amazing, accessible, way to learn about and get involved in nature, natural history, advocacy, and conservation work, wherever you live.

Image Sources: cardinal | binoculars || reading phone | cooper’s hawk || taking photograph | windows || dead bird | ROM More Links to Check Out:

Two Years of Black Birders Week: Reflections from Participants and Organizers by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

An Inside Look: Planning for Bird-friendly Cities That Put Nature First hosted by Audubon New York

Yay for week 5 of @yourocsbackstory​ :)) Iris was orphaned at a young age, and she’s been able to tell her side of it in previous weeks, here it is from her father’s perspective. (continued after the cut)

Warnings: Mentions death.

“What was I supposed to do? We, this... group of people she can’t quite comprehend, just told her that the only ones on this planet who loved her for her, and not her powers, were dead? How else was she going to react?”

- Skye “Ciel” Lévesque

Skye had to wake Iris up way past her bedtime, yet also too early for the day, and so she was slow to move at all, still wrapped up in her dreams. He sighed, this was going to be hard for both of them. “Allons-y,” he murmured. “Réveille-toi. We need to go.”

After that, she had managed to stay awake through both the drive and now, while he was trying to talk in hushed tones with both the scientists and his superiors. And he had a bad feeling that it was because she knew something was wrong.