Birding with Kenn and Kimberly

From Oak Harbor, Kim Writes: Last Saturday Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO), Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge (ONWR), and Toledo Metroparks partnered to host a conference that looked at diversity in the outdoors in a very different way. If you're a birder (and, if you're not you SHOULD be!) then you've certainly noticed that most birders tend to be somewhat similar in appearance. So, after many years of talking about this problem, we finally decided to DO something about it. That "something" became: "Diversity in Outdoor Recreation: The Many Faces of Conservation" a one-day conference that we hoped would help to break down the cultural barriers that prevent ethnic groups from actively participating in outdoor activities. This conference was Kenn's idea and he spearheaded the effort as the chair of the education committe for BSBO. He put together a great committee and led the way throughout the entire process. *Thank you to the crew - Rebecca Hink...

Can you look this cute little Myrtle Warbler in the eye, and tell it that you're not going to be here? From beautiful northern Ohio, Kenn and Kimberly write: The big bird festival known as the Midwest Birding Symposium was held in Lakeside, Ohio, in September 1997 and again in September 1999. Then it migrated west to Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, but it’s coming back to Lakeside this week: September 17 - 20, 2009. When the symposium was held at Lakeside in 1997, Kenn gave a program and helped lead field trips. At the time, he was living far away, in the southwest. It wasn’t his first trip to Ohio, but it was his first detailed look at the migration on the Lake Erie shoreline, and he was very impressed by the area and the numbers of migrant birds. When the symposium was held at Lakeside again in 1999, Kimberly attended the event and took in everything it had to offer. At the time, she was living in central Ohio. She had been birding for a while, but this was her first big bird f...

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: No, this isn't another post about a gig with our band. This is just to update a couple of points from yesterday's post about our "Puzzled By Birds" quiz. In introducing the quiz, we mentioned a similar (but faster!) bird quiz available for iPods and iPhones, but we made a couple of errors. For one, we got the capitalization of the company wrong: it's birdJam, not BirdJam (small b, capital j). Capitalization is important -- just ask the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, who would be vexed constantly by the many incorrect printings of his name, if only he could read! Secondly, we mentioned that we thought that our friends at that company had gotten the idea for their new "birdJam Twitch" game from our quiz back in January, but they didn't; they had come up with the idea independently. Great minds running on the same tracks (or flying in the same flocks), you know. We don't have any connection with birdJam; we just kno...