My section for the BioBlitz was birds on Sunday from 10:00 am- 2:00 pm. The day started off great mostly because I was able to get into the bird section rather than work with beetles, which I do not enjoy.

We worked with an excited group leader who was very passionate about birds. She spoke to us about the bird watching world and how watching is a sport. I actually learned a lot of interesting stuff about the bird watching community and how competitive it is. For those who do not know, some birders participate in something called “200 birds” where they try to find 200 different species of birds in one year. She was talking about how some people compete with each other and talk about how one has 165 while the other has 170, which drives her pretty crazy sometimes.

The actual bird watching was interesting at points. Apparently during our session, many of the birds were not coming out and so we were not able to see all of the ones we hoped to see. Some of the birds were too far away to get pictures, which was pretty unfortunate. However, seeing them in real life was exciting enough. We saw many robins and mourning birds. The most exciting part of the day was probably seeing a hawk perched on a low branch. The hawk was extremely close to us and we stood very still at a distance. It was amazing to see a bird like that right in front of us and we tried not to startle it. The hawk then flew away, getting even closer to us, and was right above our heads, which was exciting and little scary at the same time.

The BioBlitz was an interesting experience and was very different from what I expected and I definitely learned a lot about the bird-watching world that I probably otherwise would not have known.