Wild Center to Unveil Wings over the Adirondacks Bird Experience

TUPPER LAKE, NY (06/11/2007)(readMedia)-- The Wild Center/Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks will officially unveil it new Wings over the Adirondacks bird-themed experience on Wednesday, July 4 in Tupper Lake during the Wild Center’s second annual WildFest.

“To help shape the Wings over the Adirondacks experience, Wild Center staff traveled the country meeting with some of the nation’s top ornithologists, including experts from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Museum of Natural History in New York,” said Leah Filo, Wild Center staff biologist.

The Adirondack region is unique because of the vast tracts of land where birds can exist without habitat interruption. “It’s possible to see more than 70 species on the Museum campus alone, and these birds have amazing stories, such as how some influence the ecology of the Adirondack forest from as far away as South America, or how a bird native to Southeast Asia made its way to the Adirondacks. Through the new Wings over the Adirondacks experience, we’ll offer visitors the opportunity to see how birds actually drive the systems around them,” said Filo.

The Wings over the Adirondacks experience will include the following programs:

• SeeingSound: This surround-sound multimedia feature will allow visitors to get a birds-ear view of the Adirondack forest and understand just how birds and other creatures see the places they live. The media experience will let people leave with a whole new way of looking at the world around them.

• Birdland: An outdoor living exhibit will showcase more than 35 examples that will help visitors see how to enhance bird habitat. The exhibit will also feature ways birds interact with and are affected by their surroundings, and how they shape the forest. Hummingbirds, for example, incorporate the elastic fibers of a spider’s web in their nests, and depend on spiders for food. More spiders can mean more hummingbirds, and more hummingbirds mean more pollination.

• Bird Encounters: In the Lean-to in the Great Hall, visitors can experience a bird encounter with the Wild Center’s resident kestrel, owls, and other birds. A staff naturalist will discuss the many complex and interesting aspects of how these birds adapt to their environment and the fascinating and specialized tools they have developed over time to find food and survive.

• All Things Birds series: A series of presentations in the Flammer Theater offering the newest views into the world of birds including first-hand reports on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker search, the latest news from one of the nation’s foremost loon research projects, and presentations by researchers on the status and natural history of some of the rarer birds of the Adirondacks.

• Be a Bird: Interactive hands-on games will let you get into the minds of various birds. Try to match a woodpecker excavating a nest, or try to win the food game, or use an amazing new technology to get a bird to listen to your bird song.

• Bird Film: The Flammer Panoramas Theater will showcase an award winning bird film.

• Guided Bird Hikes: The Museum will supply visiting avian enthusiasts with guides to the best places nearby to observe the more rare birds of the region. Wild Center naturalists will also lead special area tours for birders and anyone interested in learning more about the variety of birds that live in the Adirondacks.

The Wild Center sits on a 31-acre trail-filled campus that includes access to a rare river oxbow marsh, a pond and open fields and woodlands. The site is adjacent to significant boreal bird areas, and near protected Bicknell’s Thrush and Spruce Grouse breeding grounds.

The Wild Center is a new kind of natural history museum that mixes the indoor and outdoors, live and digital, in unusual ways. There are waterfalls inside, and exhibit labels in the woods outside. Hiking trails outside the Wild Center are like museum exhibit halls, except they are in the forest, with labels that trained staff can change daily. Live otters mix with the splashing cascade of falling water from a trout-filled stream. Films from field scientists doing research in the Adirondacks showcase the world that surrounds the Museum. For additional information visit www.wildcenter.org or call (518) 359-7800.

WildFest Sidebar

FESTIVAL WILL MARK WINGS OPENING

The free, day-long WildFest ‘07 celebration is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. and conclude at 4:00 p.m. so visitors can get home in time for evening fireworks. The live music begins at 10:30 a.m. and the ceremony to open Wings over the Adirondacks at 11:00 a.m. There will be an entire tent on the campus dedicated to bird presentations. Visitors will be treated to a preview of the Wild Center’s planned Bird Skywalk and Skytowers, and tours of what is now the ‘greenest’ building in the Adirondacks. When the Skywalk is complete in 2008, it will showcase nearly 100 bird exhibits, and will take visitors up to the top of the tree canopy.

WildFest’s musical headliners include legendary musician Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys and the great live performer Martin Sexton. Other bands will feature music from the places Adirondack birds migrate to, including the Caribbean.

There will be a children’s tent featuring the Zucchini Brothers, a musical group lauded as “the Beatles of kid music,” and a Bird Tent where birding organizations will help visitors see the world of birds. The day will include free flight bird shows with live birds.

North Country Public Radio is the media sponsor for WildFest ‘07.

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Contact:

Lela R. Katzman

Full Spectrum Communications

(518) 785-4416

fsclela@verizon.net

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Posted Monday June 11, 2007 at 06:53 am by Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks/The Wild Center