Featured Mini-Grant Winners!

Twenty-one organizations were awarded Celebrate Urban Birds Mini-Grants this spring. We received more than 650 applications. All the events have been a true inspiration!

Here are three highlighted events (more to come in future e-newsletters):

Alzheimer’s Association:
The Alzheimer’s Alliance of Smith County, Texas, held a wonderful intergenerational event combining gardening, bird watching, sound, and the arts. 

Jaime Huff, event coordinator, was quoted on the TylerPaper.com website, where the event was featured: This event isn’t just about birds, Ms. Huff said, Its letting the community know that individuals with Alzheimer’s can give, they are important to the society and they can participate in learning. And children need to understand the disease, they need to be exposed to it.

Learn more about the event: HERE

Ward Museum:
The Ward Museum of Salisbury, Maryland, in partnership with the Garland Hayward Youth Center, the Town of Princess Anne, and ShoreCorps/PALS,  held a fantastic event in May. Volunteers planted raised flower beds and installed bird houses and bird feeding stations to enhance wildlife habitat around the Garland Hayward Youth Center.

On this day we gave birds seeds and we sowed flower seed,  but most of all we planted seeds of hope in the hearts of young people. We are helping the community one seed at a time. A harvest of change is sure to come! ~ From Ward Museum final report

Learn more about the event: HERE

The Lion’s Den:
The Lion's Den Youth Outreach Center of Indian Orchard, MA, celebrated urban birds with puppets, musicians, data collection, flower planting, and lunch! Children of all ages learned about urban birds, looked for birds and helped local artists paint a large picture of birds.

The event was featured in The Republican.

The center’s mission statement is to create safe places for youth to encounter Christ.

Learn more about the event: HERE

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Funky Nests in Funky Places Challenge
You won’t believe where some birds nest! Imagine nests on clothespins, toilets, satellite dishes, helmets, barbecue grills, artwork, and so much more. People from all over the world have sent us funny, touching, puzzling, and simply incredible photos, videos, poems and more, showing funky places where birds nest. One great example is the video 'Beyond the Call of Doo-Dee' which shows what a great housekeeper a Carolina Wren is!

This challenge has really been fun. It ends on July 31. Well announce winners on August 15.
Please visit our website to see selected entries: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/celebration/challenge/funky-nest-entry-directory

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 A Murder of Crows and other Spooky Bird Tales
(A murder is the name for a large group of crows)

Our new Photo-Video-Art Challenge starts September 1.
Birds can be downright spooky sometimes. A European Starling flies at your head, a roost of thousands of crows invades a downtown park, a pigeon demands food or takes over your balcony. Why are these birds acting so strangely? Send us an entry and well help you understand what’s really going on! 

Take a photo, cell phone image, sound, create some artwork, shoot video, write a story or a poem, or create a sculpture. Get creative! Just show birds looking bossy, strange, spooky, or doing things that just don't seem to have any explanation.

The first 50 entries will receive a copy of our "Corvid Behaviors" poster illustrated by Pedro Fernandes. This wonderful poster illustrates and describes behaviors of crows, jays, magpies and other species in the corvid family. We'll also post selected entries on the Celebrate Urban Birds website.

How do you enter?
First, learn more here:  http://www.birds.cornell.edu/celebration/challenge/challenges

Then, email your entry to urbanbirds@cornell.edu.

1. Write "A Murder of Crows" in the subject line.
2. You must include your name and mailing address in the email.
3. Tell us why you submitted your entry to the Murder of Crows challenge.
4.  Read terms of agreement.
5.  If you agree to the terms, send us your entry before October 31!   

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New Quiz
Do you know what pigeons feed their babies? How do we know that fruit is important to Cedar Waxwings? Test your knowledge!
If you get all the questions right you’ll get a certificate you can download and print out.
Have fun and learn about urban birds!

www.CelebrateUrbanBirds.org

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The Crow Paradox
Did you know that crows can easily recognize individual faces in a crowd? Can you recognize individual crows? Test yourself. Check out NPRs story and interactive game.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106826971&sc=emaf
 
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Celebrate Urban Birds in Pakistan
Sometimes we are contacted by “Interesting Bird People” and we can't resist making a page on our website so we can show others what they are doing (look under the Community tab on the Celebrate Urban Birds website)  Sakhawat Ali, who lives in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, was absolutely determined to Celebrate Urban Birds in Pakistan. He is a budding ornithologist writing about the Rock Pigeon for his thesis, at the Arid Agriculture University. He re-made our data sheets to include 15 urban birds in Pakistan, enlisted colleagues to do the observations with him, found great photos of the birds to make a photo tally sheet, and continues to photograph these birds in their native environment. He has even more plans to promote bird education in Pakistan. Visit his page to see what he's doing next.

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Sharing a Small Corner of Guatemala!
A small rural community shares its knowledge of conservation practices
View a series of videos from la Reserva Natural Privada El Patrocinio. Perhaps their words and work will inspire you to get closer to nature. (In Spanish only) http://www.birds.cornell.edu/celebration/comunidad/la-reserva-natural-privada-el-patrocinio/

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Darwin’s Pigeons
In the Summer 09 issue of Living Bird magazine an article by Stephen Bodio titled, "Darwin's Other Birds," reminds us that Charles Darwin was fascinated by the world of fancy pigeon breeding as he was developing his theories of evolution. Pigeon breeding was all the rage in Victorian England, but Darwin was especially interested because he determined that fancy pigeon breeds had one common ancestor, the Rock Pigeon. There were written histories and many experts on breeding pigeons so that he could trace the history of several breeds. Check out the Darwin's Pigeons http://darwinspigeons.com/ website, written by John Ross, a pigeon enthusiast. Or if you want to learn more about domestic pigeons, read Stephen Bodio's book Aloft: A meditation on Pigeons and Pigeon Flying.
 
You’ll be able to read Darwin’s Other Birds online soon: http://www.livingbird.org/. 

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Begonias Grow on Awning of an Old Meatpacking Plant
Read a New York Times article about the mystery flowers growing  in the meatpacking district in New York City atop the awning of an old meatpacking plant at 13th and Washington Streets. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/high-line-mystery-issolved/

We wonder what  the birds think about it and hope someone will do send us data from the location!

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Celebration in Covington KY
Ann Schoenenberger shares wonderful photos of their celebration in Covington, KY. Click here to see!
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Join Celebrate Urban Birds on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr
Join our NEW Facebook group so you can easily share photos, events, and ideas. Help us make it a great success!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Celebrate-Urban-Birds/71397573269

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/celebratebirds

Share your photos and videos with us through Flickr:  http://www.flickr.com/groups/879465@N25/

Are you a savvy social networker? Do you want to help us keep up with our sites? Were looking for volunteers to help us!

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We Need Your Help to Keep Going!
Please donate! More than 80 percent of the organizations we work with are reaching under-represented audiences and people who are new to birds. For every kit we give to someone who has not had the opportunity to connect with nature, we get a bit closer to creating a world that cares about conserving and interacting with nature. It's good for kids, it's good for families, it's good for seniors, it's good for birds! We promote healthier neighborhoods, habitat improvement for birds, getting kids outdoors, and connecting everyone with nature.

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/celebration/donate

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