From our feathery fronds and the rest of us at the Aquarium, we wish you an unbelievably wonderful National Bird Day!! 💙🐦✨
This is a perfect time to soar into birdwatching in your local neighborhood or flock to our website and Aviary Cam to learn about the winged wildlife whose protection is so important for our planet!
Whooping crane (Grus americana), a large crane species native to North America. Populations decreased after European settlement due to hunting and habitat loss, and in 1941 there were only 15 adults remaining in the wild. Thanks to decades of conservation work there are now over 500 in the wild and additional birds in captivity. You can read more about them from the USFWS here.
On this National Poets Day, August 21, we celebrate the work of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). Tagore began writing poetry as a child and remained committed throughout his life to exploring the natural and spiritual world through poetry and prose. He was known as the “Bard of Bengal” and in 1913 became the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his collection of poetry Gitanjali.
Within the Special Collections we hold the first edition of Moon, For What Do You Wait?, a collection of Tagore poems from his 1916 publication Stray Birds which consisted of 326 verses. Published in 1967 by Atheneum, Moon, For What Do You Wait? was edited by Richard Lewis, director of the Touchstone Center for Children in New York City, with illustrations by award-winning artist and author Ashley Bryan (1923-2022). Lewis manages to whittle down Tagore’s lines without losing any of the imbued wonder and delight present in the original publication. Accompanied by Bryan’s bold illustrations, readers are encouraged to let their eyes wander over the pages, getting lost in prose and imagery.
Birds can bring you entertainment as you watch their birdy dramas play out in a nearby tree. A Cardinal can make you feel the presence of one since passed. They can even motivate you to go outside your comfort zone to do right by them. What do Birds mean to you?
I hope you all got to watch some of our wonderful feathered friends today and got entertained by their antics. It has been another quiet day in my yard and I wonder if the Nuthatches, of which there is a good little number, are happy they get to collect and cache so much stuff without any competition. The Redbreasted are one of my favorites. Tame, vocal & aborbable. I think here we have a female, her dark stripe on the head looks more grey than black.