>Colette Carmouche:
I want to go over features we will be using today. These are features that we use for engaging and communicating with one another. So I'm just going to go over some of the basics. Some of you may be very familiar with WebEx, but let's go through a couple of these things and which way we could interact, one of which is probably the most popular, which is is the chat feature. In WebEx, these are referred to panels. On your right-hand side up at the very top, you should see a box there and it's a panel, actually, and it should say participants. As you scroll up and down on your right, you'll see a number of folks who are listed as panelists, which is myself along with a couple of the speakers and Colette as well. And then a little bit further down you'll see the number of attendees and all of our names listed there. So that is the participant panel. And just below that, below our names, are some icons. We have a raise hand, green check mark, red X. And those
are some of the ways in which we could communicate with one another. If we ask a question, for example, all those who are having the best weather ever, give me a green check mark. So go ahead and do that for me now, if you would. Just go ahead and click on the green check mark if you're having great weather. Okay. Cool. I just came from California. I was on vacation and it was absolutely beautiful weather. I could not have asked for anything more. Someone found the red X for no, not so much. So thank you for letting us know about that. These are toggle switches, so if you press or click on that green check mark or red X, it will clear that. I think right now Colette is the controller, so she could probably do that for us. Also, someone found emoticons. Just off to the right of the green check and the red X, there is a little happy face. It's an emoticon. If you click on the arrow to the right of it, you'll get a number of options there. So you can
see using your cursor if you scroll over, each one of those will give you the description of what that icon is. So, for example, we have a little lightbulb there. We have a little smile. We have a laugh and so on. So you could also click on any of those just to kind of play around with it and have some fun. So we might be asking you to use one of those emoticons today. Again, if you want to click it again, it will disappear or Colette can clear that for us.
Chat feature. We've done that a little bit here this morning with a few of you. You've been hearing some music while you're waiting for us to start this webinar, so that's fantastic. Some of you have found that. But this is a chat panel. And if you got that open, down towards the bottom you'll see where it says send to, and right now it should say all participants. So just to the right of that box that says all participants or should say all participants, if it doesn't, that drop-down arrow button will get you to where you need to go. So with that drop-down arrow button, you have a selection and you want to make sure you select all participants. So just to let me know, what your weather is like today. So go ahead and type in there under that blank box. Just to the right of that is a send button. So if everyone would take a few minutes and tell me what kind of weather you are having at your location. Swimming pool weather. Yes. Wonderful. Yes, hot and humid. I will
never get used to this humidity. I've been here for 29 years and still haven't gotten used to it. I went to bar harbor last fall. It was beautiful. Welcome, everyone. Yes. Humidity. Muggy. Hot. Rain. I hope you're in California. They could use it. So that's fantastic. You all did such a great job with that. Thank you, thank you so much. That's another way in which to communicate with us. So we might be asking you some questions and having you type in your responses or questions in that chat feature. So we might be doing that a little bit today. So thank you for doing that. Blue sky, warm weather. Wonderful.
So there's also something off to the left-hand side, and if you look at the very upper left-hand side of your screen, up at the very top, it should say something like file, edit, share. Down below that you might see something that says quick start or session info. But just below that there are these interesting symbols. And we're going to probably use some of these features. And the first one you see is an arrow pointing to your right. If you place your cursor over that symbol, it should say pointer. And to just the right of that there's another one of those little drop-down arrow buttons and it gives you an option to use another feature, laser. So what I'd like to do now is go ahead and click on the pointer and just anywhere on the slide, go ahead and click click. And, as you can see, your name comes up with the pointer. Now, for myself I wasn't able to change the color, but you might be able to. I haven't tried that. That's another feature we'll talk about real quick
here. But so you can adjust for that. You can clear that yourself if you wish to. If you go to the right and you eventually see a little picture of an eraser, the top down arrow button to the right of it says clear my pointer. The very top. It says clear my pointer. So if you want to clear your pointer, go ahead and do that. Otherwise the presenter, in this case, Colette, can actually clear all of those. So perfect. Great job, everyone. To the right of that we actually have a text tool, and if you click on that and want to type in something, and this is going to be a little tricky because the background is black on this, but if you want to click anywhere in maybe the blue or white portion of the slide that you're seeing, go ahead and type something. Someone was thinking about the same spot as myself. You could go ahead and type something. And make sure you hit the return key and then that should show up. So, again, if you want to get rid of your pointer, look off to the
right of that. Eventually you'll see a picture of an eraser. Click on the drop-down arrow and click clear my pointer. And then if you want to clear your typing, your text, it would be clear annotation. Clear my annotation, which is the third one down. Excellent. You look like you've got a good handle on that. Those are the few interactions we might be using today, and so if you have any questions, let us know. If you have any problems, let us know. Otherwise I'd like to turn it over to our first speaker, which is Sue. Thank you for your patience. And I'll ask Colette if she could go ahead and clear those annotations for me. That would be wonderful. Bonbon thank you so much, Katrina. You are welcome. I'll give an intro for Sue, director for environment for the Americas and she coordinates international bird day. She's been working with international migratory since the mid 1990s and has coordinated it since 2000. She has over 20 years of experience
developing education programs in the U.S. and Mexico and coordinates the western hummingbird partnership. So let's everyone welcome Sue and I'm going to turn it over to her.
Sue: Thank you. Thank you for having me today. I'm excited to be here to talk about international migratory bird day. I'd like to talk about how the program fits with your connecting solutions and stewardship theme with the National Park Service. But throughout the program what I'm going to do is provide a few IMBD, FAQs, talk about science, stewardship and solutions, share some information about the IMBD resources that are available to you and then talk about making connections not only in the United States, but beyond borders.
So first international migratory bird day. Everyone always says when is international migratory bird day? And the thing is is that birds don't migrate on a single day. We found that when we had a specific day, and officially the date in the United States and Canada is the second Saturday in May. And for the Latin America and the Caribbean participants we choose the month of October and the second Saturday of October as the official date. But that really depends on where you're located. You all know how different your sites are and the different times of the year that birds come through. So once we opened up the date, and you'll notice on the materials that we don't include any specific day on them, we found that a lot more organizations and groups were interested in participating and highlighting the importance of migratory birds and migratory bird conservation. Who coordinates international migratory bird day? That's environment for the Americas. We are a
nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. International migratory bird day serves at the keystone program for just about everything we do. It has led to new opportunities and new programs that we actually had never imagined when migratory bird day was first created back in 1993. So it's been a very exciting program.
We have grown every year since 2005. We're now at 700 events and growing. So that's also very exciting to see. We're always happy to have park service and other agency participation in the program.
So how does international Migratory Bird Day fit with National Park Service and its science, stewardship and solutions objectives? Migratory birds are just -- they're just a wonderful topic to bring into any event. The fortunate thing about migratory birds or birds in general is that you can find them wherever you are. So this gives an opportunity for you to bring in science concepts that the general public may not be familiar with, including a lot of people just aren't aware that birds migrate and they're not aware of how far birds migrate. That leads, of course, to using scientific equipment. One thing we find about Migratory Bird Day events is they are typically attract people who have little to no experience with birds, bird watching or bird conservation. It's very -- it does not attract the elite birders. It does not attract the experienced birders. This is a family-focused event for the most part, not that there aren't bird survey activities. But
what we find is often it's the first experience youth and their parents have things to use spotting scopes or binoculars or learn about collecting data. A number of programs enter their sightings into E bird and share those findings every year or might do some other citizen science program like the national phenology network and enter data about the arriving times of birds.
It also promotes stewardship. Our goal is to turn knowledge into action. We want to see that sites that host events look to the future and look to ways to garner the energy and enthusiasm of their participants and get them out there doing things that help benefit birds. This is an event that takes place in boulder, Colorado every year, and the funds that are raised from that event go towards plantings for birds that take place at one of the premiere breeding, stop-oversights and migration sites for migratory birds in the cities.
Finally, solutions. Many people aren't aware of the many threats to migratory birds. At our events we encourage groups to share information about those threats to migratory birds and ways that they can incorporate solutions, whether it's at home or on a larger scale. Everything counts. And collisions, this shows how people can decorate their windows to help prevent bird collisions. This is an effective solution people can implement in their own windows.
And what about the resources that we offer you? Every year we work to put together a new packet of materials and information that you can use at your sites. We select a new theme each year that is pertinent and relevant to migratory birds. Also, we consider all of our 700 sites and more across the western hemisphere. And we make sure that it is a topic that's going to fit for them. So we work with partners across the western hemisphere to develop these materials and themes and messaging that are all available to you. So if you'll look on the image that's on the screen, what you'll see is that we have our website and we have two websites. I'll talk a little bit about both of them. We have extensive social media. We're always getting information out through social media. We have a database of resources that are available to you and your site to download or to search through to see if there are materials available from other organizations. We have a section of the website that
is completely dedicated to information about the current year's Migratory Bird Day theme. And in 2015 the theme is restore habitat, restore birds. We still have events going on. I think Rocky Mountain national park was one of the latest national parks to host an event. They host theirs in June and they're also a perfect example of why the second Saturday in May doesn't work because for them typically there's still snow on the ground and migratory birds haven't returned.
The program features new art each year. The materials are developed in English and Spanish. It's always exciting to watch the event unfold. So it's very fun for participants as well as to participating organizations.
Our second site is what's called a microsite. We feel like we're really up with the times, having developed this site, and it's solely focused on Migratory Bird Day. And this has another opportunity to get information that you might use for your event. We not only have print materials, but we also have a lot of downloadable materials that you can access. Importantly is the opportunity to let us know about your event. So you can go on to this site. You can share information about your event. And you can get a pin put on a map that other people can access. So really it's free advertising. We encourage you if you host events to get that information into this event registration opportunity. And it also helps us determine our success and to reach out to you and other participating sites so that we can help you better. We love to get your participation in Migratory Bird Day.
What we offer, as I mentioned, we develop a number of materials every year, so we develop educational materials and we develop promotional materials. Our educational materials include activities that are relevant to the annual conservation theme. So, for example, restore habitat, restore birds. This year we focused on five habitats, but we also opened up the opportunity for people to highlight the habitats at their sites if they weren't one of those five. Man groves was one of those five habitats. This booklet shares information about mangroves as well as activities. the migration game shares facts about migratory birds and threats they face along the way. These are all downloadable materials. So all you have to do is click on one of these icons and it will pull up a little tool bar on the left side of the screen where you can choose what you want to download. So, for example, we've been creating a number of social media tools that people have really found useful and they've
been very popular. These are our downloadable infographics that you can use in social media or even print out as handouts. We did them in two ways this year. What it provides is this image that can be used, for example, in a Facebook posting. So these are all provided again in English and Spanish and are free to download and we hope that people use them broadly.
We also have a monthly newsletter, so we invite people to join up through that way, through the newsletter. We put information out each month about the progress of international Migratory Bird Day, highlights from events that have taken place. This of course in addition to our social media. And one of our goals is to pull groups in across the western hemisphere. What we find is today social media and all of the ways that we can get messages through email, through telephone calls, which is becoming rarer and rarer, through Facebook posts and all these other opportunities, we are getting bombarded with different messages. What we try to do is create an unified message for conservation and to get people to use that message so that there's someone single voice promoting bird conservation.
As part of our program -- and actually what started with international Migratory Bird Day was our concerns that not everybody was participating. And one thing that we noticed was at a lot of our events we did not see some of the growing populations or some of the diverse populations at the events. And we wondered why. Specifically with Latino communities. And the reason why we questioned the absence of the Latino communities in the events is that we do work across the western hemisphere. So we do work in Mexico, Central America, Columbia and the Caribbean islands. And there is a large amount of participation in those sites. We don't see any challenge with engaging Latino families in these events across the border. So what was going on and why were we not reaching Latino families in the United States? And of course when we started our research in 2009, we were hearing a lot of maybe speculation about what was going on. Perhaps the parks or natural areas were too