{"id":15703,"date":"2021-05-10T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.massaudubon.org\/yourgreatoutdoors\/?p=15703"},"modified":"2021-05-07T16:06:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T20:06:50","slug":"take-5-freebirds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.massaudubon.org\/yourgreatoutdoors\/take-5-freebirds\/","title":{"rendered":"Take 5: Freebirds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mass Audubon’s annual Bird-a-thon<\/a> is an amazing event that allows us to share our love for birds and, thankfully, the number of participants grows each year. We have always been mindful that while this event has unmatched potential for getting people excited about birds, birding, and conservation, it also has the potential to create stress for some species if we do not manage how participants interact with the rarest birds found in our state, especially those that are on-nest this time of year. Stress on wildlife is the last thing we want to encourage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For several years, we have been adding precautions to the official event rules and guidelines<\/a> to ensure that our Bird-a-thon activities are not causing any harm to birds. For instance, using audio recordings to lure birds in is not permitted. This rule is there to protect rare birds from being lured with a broadcasted audio file multiple times simply to be counted by teams during Bird-a-thon.  Some species are given \u201cFreebird\u201d status for exactly that reason\u2014every team can check off these birds, and that eliminates the possibility of multiple teams descending on one rare bird in quick succession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year we are taking additional steps to protect birds during Bird-a-thon by adding the regularly occurring and rare owls to our list of “Freebirds”. Each team gets to count these birds toward their totals without having to actually see them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n