The Harris Center’s Big Year of Birding

What better way to celebrate 50 years of land protection and environmental education than by cataloguing the birds that make the SuperSanctuary their home? (photo © Ben Conant)

My niece Bryana lives in the Murcia region of Spain. She recently sent me a picture of a bird feeder that is hanging outside of her window, with a question: why weren’t any birds coming to her feeder? I get this question a lot, usually from people in New Hampshire, and the answer often has to do with choice of bird seed or the placement of the feeder. In Bryana’s case, the answer was different. The picture she sent me showed a solitary feeder framed by concrete and steel buildings, without a lick of green space anywhere. If Bryana wanted birds to visit her bird feeder, she needed more than a new brand of bird seed. She needed to move house.

You could say that one reason the Harris Center protects land is to ensure that there are still birds at our feeders. And one way to put our faith in land protection to the test is by getting out on the 24,000+ acres that we’ve conserved to see what critters call it home. This is the idea behind the Harris Center’s Big Year of Birding — a series of birding field trips scheduled throughout the year, with the simple mission of documenting the avian diversity of the SuperSanctuary. What better way to celebrate 50 years of land protection and environmental education? We hope you’ll join us for one, or all, of these special birding outings!