Have you stopped to notice the animals that come through your backyard? Nature is all around us and sometimes we are moving too fast to enjoy it. Birds are some of the more fascinating creatures and taking time to enjoy them can be just what we need.
Create a bird sanctuary
Wisconsin is home or throughway to more than 400 species of birds, yet many of us are only familiar with a few species. In this course, learn what steps to take to attract birds to your yard or even window feeders whether it’s those that spend their winters here, the songbirds that arrive in spring, or the summer hummingbirds that are a thrill to watch. Ornithologist, author and master birder Steve Betchkal will cover topics including attracting birds to your yard, making your yard a bird sanctuary, backyard bird identification, and identifying birds by sound. Each session will have plenty of time for Q&A. At the end of the course, there will be an optional field session at Beaver Creek Reserve with Steve Betchkal. Grab your binoculars and insect repellent and learn where to look and what to listen for from an expert! If you enjoy birds and would like more feathered friends to visit your yard or feeders, this is the class for you!
Who should attend
Anyone interested in learning more about birds in Northwest Wisconsin. Enrollment is open only to those 18 and over.
Instructors
-
Steve Betchkal is the author of six books – Walk the Walk, Camp the Camp, Bird the Bird, All of This & Robins Too, Make Birds Not War, Wisconsin Birding Trails, & Cat Tales. In his 30-year career as a journalist he has produced 11,000 TV stories and hundreds of articles about birds and outdoor adventures for newspaper and magazine, and has won 70 awards for excellence in journalism including five Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award for news writing.
An ornithologist and master birder who is fluent in bird – Steve is a veteran of five of Wisconsin’s 92 Breeding Bird Surveys, has hiked/camped/backpacked/traveled 49 U.S. states, Mexico, St. Lucia, Costa Rica, 45 National Forests, 78 National Wildlife Refuges, 71 National Parks, and four Canadian provinces in pursuit of wild birds. In 2017 he worked in the Galápagos for Lindblad-National Geographic.
He is the president of Gaylord Nelson Audubon, founder of MartinMart and Welcome Back Bird Day, designer and writer of the Hubbard Scientific Industries Bio2 “Inflatable Pigeon” classroom resource, contributor to John Feith's "Birds, Birds, Birds: An Indoor Birdwatching Field Trip,” and the producer of The Wisconsin Society for Ornithology’s Bird TV.