Proforma Coming

I'll post the first proforma here as a PDF soon as it's availible. If you'd like a copy of the one I'm using, give me a hollar.

Change in Name

Alas I forgot to mention that the program will now be called Community Bird Search.

And I've also set up a blog on wordpress, which can be found here : http://birdsearch.wordpress.com/ .

Cheers Folks,

Richard.

A Change in Direction

After a an almost complete lack of community interest in the idea for this project and a serious bout of self reflection, I have made some significant changes in the direction of the program.

I have decided on a 7 stage approach that looks something like this :

Stage 1 : Create a list of likely sites in the south west that can be used for community to learn about birds.

Stage 2 : Engage community groups and individuals in creating a 1 page site specific proforma for identifying birds, flora and their habitat.

Stage 3 : Compile proformas into a PDF booklet availible for download off the blog.

Stage 4 : Trial proformas with specific community groups, such as school children.

Stage 5: Engage local volunteers who would like to carry the project ie. website development, monitoring, database upkeep etc.

Stage 6: Create additonal tools for monitoring local bird species & create a database for cataloging bird data

Stage 7 : Feed information generated to local bird groups, local DSE & National groups such as Viridans, The Gould League & Birds Australia.

So that's it in a nutshell.

The good news is that I've engaged Hawksedale College students in developing a proforma for Hawksedale Common and have prospective interest from the South West Environmental Volunteerism Initiative & an Environmental Work Experience Program (the old Green Corps) that I hope will hit the ground by the end of the year.

So watch out, here we come. If you'd like to know more about this little project I'm cooking up, give me a call on 0458 268 119.

Middle Island Penguin Monitoring

Check out Basalt to Bay Link (http://b2bln.blogspot.com/) for latest numbers on the penguins on middle island.

Radio Interview

Ahggh, I'm not a morning person. Jeremy did a great job with the interview but I couldn't think straight. Anyway, the word is out.

Thanks to everyone who has shown some interest in the program. I'll be home for the rest of the week, so feel free to contact me by phone or email but I am headed back to my farm in central Victoria for most of next week, so I'll be unreachable until after then.

ABC Interview

Last Friday I recieved a call from Jeremy Lee from ABC's South West 'Breakfast Show'. Jeremy said that he had seen my flyers around Port Fairy and thought there might be a story to be found. So this week, more of you will know about SWBSP. Thanks Jeremy for the publicity and being such a nice guy !

ARTISTS WANTED

Volunteer artists are required to help draw/paint birds for the South West Bird Search Program manual.

I need a core group of 10-20 artists (from the Warrnambool-Koroit-Port Fairy area) who would be happy to donate their time to drawing/painting 4-5 birds each, that can be used in the SWBSP manual. Birds can be drawn or painted in colour but must be photo realistic.

Why not use photos you might ask ? Well, in my mind a good piece of art can show the eye more than a photo. Pictured against a simple background, the competant artist can weed out distractions that might fill a photo and capture the character of the bird and it's species.

Ideally birds should be done in A4 size, with the intention of including them full size and thumb size in the manual.

What I would like to imagine, is that we get enough interest and we can auction off all works (after they have been copied for the manual) and the funds raised can be put towards a local environmental project - such as revegetating a potential local bird hotspot or community reserve. Any other ideas will be gladly considered !

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to do a piece of art for the auction but not the manual. Any type of bird related visual artwork would be suitable for the auction - from modern art (picasso/dali ish birds) to conventional art to aboriginal art. Any style. Your choice.

To contact me please call me (Richard) on 0458 268 119 or email me at swbirdsearch@gmail.com .

South West Bird Search Program

The SWBSP is my little effort to democratize what we know about birds in south west Victoria.
As an idea I'd had it in my head for a long time. The turning point came in 2001 (during a social work placement with the North Central CMA) when I met Terry White from Maryborough - who had developed a bird search program for kids in WA. It sounded like it was an incredibly successfull program and I liked the way that Terry had faith in kids capacity to create new knowldge. The program supposedly went national but I haven't been able to find out what became of it. Anyway this is my version of bird search.

The broad vision of the SWBSP is to help kids & community volunteers in creating & sharing knowledge about native birds in South West Victoria. There will be two arms to the program. One arm will fit into the South West Environmental Volunteerism Initiative (which I'll describe in another blog in the next few weeks), while the other will fit into primary and secondary schools in the region. I'm hoping to run a pilot of the SWBSP in Port Fairy primary schools - starting second term 2009. If all goes well, hopefully we can roll the program out in schools throughout south west Victoria.

The core aims of the SWBSP will be :

1. To create greater awareness of local birds & threats to their survival
2. To empower kids & community volunteers to become knowledge brokers
3. To empower communities to take responsibility for caring about local bird species.

To make the SWBSP work, three things have to happen - first I need to create fruitfull partnerships with key conservation groups, schools and volunteer groups; second I need to create a Bird Search Manual; and thirdly I need to engage local artists to develop a folio that we can integrate into the program.

I'm currently hard at work on developing a manual which will cover birds from about Mepunga to Warrnambool to Yambuk to Hawkesdale and Woolsthorpe. Most of the focus will be on coastal areas but in time I hope to expand the manual out to more rural areas. There is likely to be some 70-80 species included in the manual, maybe more. I'm unsure yet just how much to put in, as I'm keen to make it as kid friendly as possible.

What Id like to imagine is that the SWBSP will be a user friendly program that schools can easily integrate into their environmental studies courses and can be tailored to both primary and secondary students. It will be innovative and allow kids to create their own information and share it with the world.

The second aspect to the program will be developed for community groups that are part of the South West Environmental Volunteerism Initiative and will focus on specific project sites, such as Tozer Reserve, Hawkesdale Common and Tower Hill.

Eventually it would be nice to roll the program out to farmers and connect it with the Birds on Farms work that Birds Australia have done.

On the pragmatic level it will involve kids and community volunteers, going out and learning about the kinds of habitats in which birds live, identifying birds, recording numbers and locations of sightings and uploading information to a local database, Google Earth, Viridans and Birds Australia databases. Program participants will be able to create a Google Earth Tour of what birds are in the area at different times - and share that with the world. It should be fun and has the potential to bring in bird lovers from all around the world.

Naturally, their are many groups out there allready doing related things and I hope in time to create fruitfull partnerships with each of them and dovetail with what they've allready given kids. Groups like local DSE, Parks, local Bird Observers Clubs, local Field Naturalist Groups, The Gould League and Birds Australia. I don't intend on reinventing the wheel but what I would like to do is develop an integrated approach for kids and community volunteers that empowers them to create and share knowledge in a way that hasn't been done before. As a Twitcher once said to me, "Why should government agencies and scientists have all the information about birds ?".

Ultimately it's really about bringing science and a love of nature back to the people.

And when it comes to kids, who better to lead us into the future, then the next generation.