Birding

We love to travel to find new birds and participate in a lot of bird counts. We also created a Guide to Birding Field Guides and host a collection of over 300 birding links from all over the globe.

Conservation

While our main focus continues to be birds, we promote other areas of conservation as well. Conserving land not only benefits wildlife, but is hugely beneficial to people as well.

Outdoors

We love all sorts of outdoor activities, especially hiking and spend a lot of time outside with dogs and horses. We are working to produce more articles on all sorts of outdoor fun!

Photography

Every week we bring you Bird Photography Weekly. We periodically talk about our adventures in digiscoping. Feel free to browse our photo lifelist.

Article in: Birding

Midwest Birding Symposium

The Birdfreak Team just arrived at the Midwest Birding Symposium (MBS) in Moline, Illinois (part of the Quad Cities). We aren’t paid to go to birding events (yet) and this is our first under the Birdfreak name. The main reason we wanted to go to this event was to meet and bird with Kenn Kaufman. Plus, the Quad Cities are relatively close by and this trip fit nicely into our work/school schedules.

This guy couldn’t stop staring at all our birding gear as we headed to register for the MBS
"Tickets Please"

History of the Midwest Birding Symposium

The event is held every other year, an oddity among birding festivals that are usually held annually. Also, after the MBS is held twice in one state it must move to a new one. In 2005 the MBS was held in Davenport, Iowa, part of the Quad Cities, yet they counted it as part of Illinois. So in 2009 it will move to a new state.

The symposium workshops are being held at the Stoney Creek Inn
Stony Creek Inn

Lobby

The first symposium began in 1989 and was held in the Chicago area suburbs of Illinois. Hal Cohen, Professor of Ornithology at the College of DuPage, brought up the idea for the symposium.

The symposiums since:

Each year the MBS donates a portion of registration proceeds to an environmental/birding-related cause. This year’s donations will go to future management planning at the Milan Bottoms in Illinois. This area is a rich flood plain along the upper Mississippi River which harbors a large rookery and night roost for Wintering Bald Eagles. Although Great Blue Herons are the dominant species, the 3500 acre area provides habitat for two Illinois endangered species – The Black-crowned and Yellow-crowned Night Herons.

For more information visit the Quad City Audubon Society.
Fountain outside Stoney Creek Inn

2 Comments or Trackbacks   ↓ Jump to add comment ↓