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Hello birdos,
I am also on a group e-mail in Ontario, Canada, called
ONTBIRDS which I find endlessly amusing with regard to those that write about
places I used to haunt and species I used to strive to see or relish
in.
The particular aspect of the e-mail, that I have included an
excerpt from below, pertaining to birding-aus is the option to post migratory
and other interesting sightings elsewhere than with the main group, hence an
attempt to decrease the number of circulating e-mails that are not of principal
focus (I know .... you're saying you mean e-mails like this one .... or ....
you're saying "define what is of focus").
Anyway, the other thing that struck me is the massive use that
these sightings seem to be getting in schools. Think of the number of
young minds that are being enriched by someone reporting the first leopard frog
call of the year or the first wave of monarchs arriving from the
Yucatan.
Great stuff and certainly there must be scope for the same
here ... those involved with Year on the Wing ..... what you say of this
???
Ignoring all the waffle above, as a school teacher and avid
birdo, it's just a damn fine thing to see happening as a link between both
passions in my life.
The excerpt :
"This message has been approved by the ONTBIRDS coordinator:
Journey North is an award-winning internet-based science program
that
allows students to monitor and study the arrival of spring across
North
America. In it's 10th year, this program is utilized by about
600,000
students from 3000 classrooms in Canada and the United States. A
key
component of this program are reports of certain target migratory
species
and phenomenon. Many members of this list responded to a request
for
winter robin sightings. On the following page, you can see exactly
how
these reports were mapped:
THANK YOU!
FOR THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO CONTINUE SHARING THEIR IMPORTANT
SPRING
SIGHTINGS AND OBSERVATIONS THAT DO NOT QUALIFY FOR POSTING TO
ONTBIRDS,
Journey North would be pleased to accept the following
sightings:
Frog (first heard)
Hummingbird (first sighted)
Loon (first
sighted)
Monarch Butterfly (first sighted, first egg, first larva)
Oriole
(first sighted, first nest-building)
Red-winged Blackbird (first
sighted)
Barn Swallow (first sighted)
Other signs of spring.
There are also a number of non-bird species and other phenomenon
to
report, such as Ice Out, Leaf Out, First Earthworm Seen, etc.
Thank you"
Cheers,
P.
Don Davis
Toronto, ON
Paul Rose
Year 9 Purple Team
Department of Biology and
Chemistry
Wesley College - Glen Waverley
620 High Street Road
Glen
Waverley 3150
(03) 9881 5426
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