Every spring when the eulachon spawn, the Stikine River flats are flooded with thousands of migratory shorebirds. And each year, the town responds in-kind with the Stikine River Birding Festival, filling the radio airwaves with bird songs and holding an array of avian-themed events.
This season, the festival will run for three weekends between April 21 and May 6. It will feature movies, crafts, workshops and more.
“Birding is such a nice welcome to spring,” said Corree Delabrue of the U.S. Forest Service, who helped plan the festival. She loves listening to birds singing in the morning and is amazed by their migratory abilities. “They’re world travelers,” she said. “They’re connected, they fly around everywhere.”
To kick off the multi-week event, Forest Service naturalists will partner with the Irene Ingle Public Library to share Earth Day-themed stories and crafts with children at 10 a.m. Friday, April 21. Then, the Nolan Center will show “Rio,” a family-friendly film starring two animated macaws, at 4 p.m. Sunday.
At 6:30 p.m. on Friday April 28, in the Nolan Center, ecologist and keynote speaker John Marzluff will teach attendees how to think like a raven. Though ravens are a common sight around town, rooting through the trash or pecking at golf balls at Muskeg Meadows, these birds are uncommonly intelligent. Their abilities to use tools, solve problems, plan for the future and develop mental maps put them on intellectual par with children under 7 years old, according to a BBC report.
For the past several years, Marzluff has conducted research in Yellowstone National Park, studying the interactions between the area’s ravens, wolves, pumas and people.
The University of Washington professor is prominent in his field and has written several popular non-fiction books.
“Ravens have evolved in a very dynamic landscape,” said Marzluff. “Things were shifting quickly, humans were coming in and having greater and greater effects. They’ve been able to track this very dynamic food resource in landscape. Most animals that were faced with that went extinct, but ravens were able to survive in large part because of their ability to keep tabs on these different resources.”
During hunting season, they might follow human hunters, hoping to feed on their leftovers; in the winter, they might track wolves; when neither food source is available, they might visit the local dumpster or search for food along the seashore.
“They have a mental map of where these things exist in their world,” he explained.
Marzluff has never been in Wrangell before and plans to use the festival as an opportunity to visit the Stikine River flats, a popular site for viewing migratory shorebirds.
His talk will last roughly 45 minutes, with a question and answer period at the end.
The weekend after Marzluff’s talk will be packed with more opportunities to learn about — and explore — the natural environment of Wrangell. On Saturday morning, April 29, community members can watch Juneau-based naturalist Gwen Baluss catch birds and attach bands to their legs. These bands act as a sort of license plate, allowing scientists to track the birds’ movements.
Later that afternoon, Alaska Native traditional healer Meda DeWitt will lead an indigenous plant walk, where attendees can collect plants to use in a salve-making workshop the next day. Since the shorebirds that visit Wrangell are world travelers, biologists from Chile and Mexico will teach the community about the winter leg of these birds’ migratory journeys and the conservation efforts going on in their respective countries.
The final weekend, May 5 to 6, will include a scavenger hunt, bird identification walk, and birdhouse-making craft.
The festival is organized by the U.S. Forest Service and borough government. To view the full schedule of events, visit stikinebirding.org and click on the “schedule” tab.
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