BirdsNZ Youth Camp add to THE FLOCK

School holidays is usually the time for an extra hour in bed. Not for the young birders at the BirdsNZ Youth Camp held at Pukorokoro Miranda. They were often up before dawn.
Pleasingly they did find time to add some new birds to the flock.

 Being young birders a whole lot of new species were added.

Somehow even a kokako found it's way into the gathering of shorebirds.

It was great to see the enthusiasm for this conservation project. There are some amazing pieces of artwork amongst the new additions.

The Pukorokoro Miranda FLOCK has 110 members, many more birds are being created in other places.
www.miranda-shorebird.org.nz/theflock

#TheFlockNZ

Letting your inner Picasso loose!

There are just so many ways to decorate a bird, here are a few.
The top bird is realistic, permanent marker pens on shower board.
The rest are more inventive. However YOU can write a message, knit a rugby jersey, make a mosaic or even paint a flag. The purple "hippiebird" has painted flowers outlined with marker pen and "Santa" has lots of gold stars and tinsel.
There are some amazing birds on the way to join The Flock and they are all going to help to "Keep the Birds Coming"
#TheFlockNZ
www.miranda-shorebird.org.nz/theflock

New Roosts

 There were happy children and busy hands when Jim Eagles visited Kaiaua School last week. Painting "the Flock" birds is a great fit with the school's teaching programme. Really looking forward to visiting to see the finished birds.

 Meanwhile down in Nelson another flock is fledging, the first in the South Island. Rochelle downloaded the plans from www.miranda-shorebird.org.nz/theflock , then persuaded some friends to make the cut-outs. These are the first two finished birds. Love the eyes! A roosting site is being sought.

 Of course many of the real birds are now in the Yellow Sea region. At the end of the week a small group from Pukorokoro Miranda Naturalists' Trust will travel to North Korea, following the birds. We hope that they will manage to keep in touch and tell us of their findings.

Great ideas migrate

Great ideas migrate, just like birds do! This one started its journey on Ainslie Beach, Southport, Lancashire in the United Kingdom. Six hundred gaily decorated bird models were assembled on the beach as part of an environmental celebration. It was the work of many people of all ages and attracted a great deal of attention. As you can see it was a very colourful and attractive art installation.

 The first FLOCK had come into being.

At Pukorokoro-Miranda Shorebird Centre (PMSC) we thought "Hmmn, this is great, we could give this a kiwi twist and help to promote the cause of shorebirds in NZ." So we began to create our FLOCK

There was a real need. Those migratory birds that leave us to breed in the Arctic have been suffering. Each year fewer birds reach the shores of NZ from their Arctic breeding grounds. To make it even more urgent we had just learned the extent of this population decline. Each year the Bar-tailed Godwit, the NZ Bird of the Year, was losing 2% of its population. For other species the decline was much worse. The long term prospects were very worrying,

 

More people needed to know about this. These amazing birds needed a lot of help. How can you protect and care about something if you don't know about it?

  www.miranda-shorebird.org.nz/theflock

The Flock Project is PMSC's way of getting the message across in a fun but caring way.We need to keep these birds coming. Come and join us, wherever in NZ or the world you live. Paint or decorate a bird. Each one painted shows that one more person is concerned.


We will be blogging about THE FLOCK for another year. In fact until they leave our shores for their breeding grounds via the Yellow Sea. Over that year we want to tell you about these birds, their amazing abilities and the problems that they are facing. We won't be forgetting our own shorebirds either.

 

Many of these are facing challenges of a different nature. There are so many interesting stories to tell. We would particularly want o hear from all of you folk out there. Building THE FLOCK is becoming a real adventure. We don't know where it will end but do no that it will be, in fact is, a real success. But we have hardly started.

This is where we were on the 14th of February this year.We had this very small flock but PMSC was convinced that this project was going to work. So we started.

Just over a month later THE FLOCK had grown a bit. Lots of important people turned up. They signed and decorated birds and THE FLOCK grew some more.

At this moment there are schools and individuals busy making and decorating birds. Many are around Miranda but there are others in the Bay of Plenty,Devonport and even in Christchurch. It could even be whole new South Island FLOCK!

Many people are involved, Children, teachers and grown ups as well. We want to tell all of their stories.
 #theflock

THE FLOCK is taking wing. Come fly with us. It is going to be quite a journey!