For the Siuslaw’s international Migratory Bird day celebration we had a great time. We had art’s and crafts (coloring, build a plover chick, and make a bird mask), a western snowy plover and marbled murrelet information table, a bird pledge section, two bird walks, and a bird-cookie station.
Thursday and Friday were dedicated to setting up for IMBD. We printed out our sheets, found our art gear in the “snake pit”(which is just a basement and has nothing to do with snakes), and baking cookies. We probably baked about 5 dozen gluten free cookies and maybe 10 dozen regular glutenous cookies. At first we decorated them to represent birds in the area: lazuli bunting, snowy plover, semi-palmated plover, bald eagle, Stellar’s jay, spotted towhee. Then, we decorated them to represent other birds: black throated blue warbler, black capped vireo, painted bunting, kingfishers, ruby throated humming bird. And then, when we had been decorating for hours, we got creative. We made tie-dyed birds, made up birds, batman-birds, spiderman-birds, wonderwoman-birds.
I honestly think I learned at least 15 new birds, just by decorating them on a cookie. I had a great time.
I enjoyed hearing people’s comments about them:
“That’s so cute!”
“Who made them!”
“Wow!!!”
“Is that a Wilson’s warbler?!”
“Theyyyyyyy’re GREAT!”
But, my absolute favorite was the following interaction:
There was a young family (the husband had just finished his Ph.D. at OSU—Congrats!), they had a daughter that was 8 years old who was talking to a middle-aged couple. The older gentleman was talking about the event “This is really great, the birds are amazing here, I love the coast”.
The young family agreed, and then mentioned the unique habitats in the area and says something about plovers. The older gentleman says “Oh yeah, I just ate a snowy plover earlier today”. The family was shocked, and clearly didn’t know how to respond. The little girl looked like she was about to cry.
The guy laughs ,“oh, I meant the cookies.”
