WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2024

4:00 Check in at your respective lodge. If you can arrive earlier, you can take advantage of the Appalachian Forest Museum’s hiking trails and engaging Forest murals. 

WEDNESDAY EVENING
7:00 pm Introduction at the  Appalachian Forest Museum and Evening Program: Bird Habitats. Meet your course leader, Artemis Eyster; your course assistant, Teri Gilligan; and your course colleagues. Join us for a program to learn how birds do not exist in a vacuum, but in the cradle of living ecosystems. People most quickly learn their birds when they can associate them with the habitat in which they are found. Once you learn your bird calls, the calls will be forever embedded in your memory with the scents and sights of their associated native plant community. Tonight will be a sensitization to the main habitats for birds, and the most familiar and easily identifiable birds associated with each of those main habitats.

THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2024

BIRDS OF THE DEEP FOREST RIVERINE HABITATS

Optional: Enjoy the Dawn Chorus On Your own. During this course we tend not to “bird” early in the morning because the density of bird sounds is so entangled and loud, that it is probably the worst time for students to single out a bird call and learn or recognize it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seek out the experience in nearby woods. When the sun starts to lighten the sky, the bird chorus is as close to heaven as you can get in Ohio with the vireos, flycatchers, wood thrush and all of the others sounding off at the same time. 

7:30 Fort Hill – Bird Songs of the Deep Forest. Please eat breakfast before we depart for the day. We will meet as a group to depart for the largest, oldest grandest contiguous forest in all of southern Ohio—the 1400-acre Fort Hill, managed by the Arc on behalf of the Ohio Historical Society. Here you will learn the sounds of quintessential summer – the grosbeaks, vireos, flycatchers and warblers of what was once Ohio’s dominant ecosystem  – the mature deciduous forest with its high closed canopy and dimly lit forest floor. Fort Hill also has another claim to fame – its 2000 year old Native American Earthworks.

12:00-2:30 Break For Lunch 

2:30 More Deep Forest Birds — Maude’s Cedar Narrows. As the heat of mid-day begins to decline, the birds become active again and often resume their singing. Maude’s Ceder Narrows and Gods Country are deep closed-canopy forests lining the lush corridor of the Rocky Fork Gorge.

5:00 Break For Dinner

7:00 pm Evening Program: Bird Songs of the Grasslands. Prior to Native American and European agriculture in Ohio, Ohio boasted open native grasslands – often referred to today as prairies –  which were inhabited by a host of interesting bird species. Most of these birds have managed to adapt with various degrees of success and failure to our abandoned farm fields, pastures, and small prairie remnants; many are now rare due to reduced habitat. The songs of grassland birds are much different in ambience than the songs of the forest. Once you learn them you will find a “fourth” dimension added to your grassland outings. Once familiar, these songs that are sometimes so beautiful they will make your heart ache as you pay witness the earth’s songs of sunlight and wind.

FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2024

GRASSLANDS & MEADOWS

7:30 am Seip Earthworks – Our First Introduction to Grassland Birds. We will depart for Seip Earthworks, a 2000 year old Native American earthwork complex just east of Bainbridge, roughly 8 miles away. Seip Mound contains large expanses of post agricultural fields between Highway 50 and Paint Creek. For unknown reason, these fields are some of the richest in our region for a high diversity of grassland birds, some of them quite rare.

12:00 pm Break For Lunch

1:30 pm Beginner Bonus - Get some extra coaching and practice. Meet at the Appalachian Forest Museum for a short walk to apply your skills and get some extra help and support. Sometimes we just need time to slow down and test out what we’ve learned and ask for help. If this sounds like you, please join us at the Appalachian Forest Museum to take a walk before our next program. 

3:00 pm Orientation to Birds on the Edge. Learn the five key species of our final habitat type of the workshop. Certain birds thrive where grasslands meet a forest as young trees start building habitat into  a meadow. Many of the edge birds have both beautiful songs and colors. One of the gifts of knowing birds' songs is that it’s more likely to see them too. The brilliance of the indigo bunting’s plumage is certainly one of those cases.

BIRDS ON THE “EDGE”

4:00 Break For Dinner 

6:00 pm After Dinner: Trip to Ridgeview Farm: As the sun inches back toward the horizon, we will head out to the open grasslands and forest edges of Ridgeview Farm, a region of the Highlands Nature Sanctuary that has been out of agriculture for over 25 years. This preserve is now a model for old farm biodiversity restoration, permaculture and forest gardening. It is an excellent place to learn birds common to these kinds of habitat.

SATURDAY, MAY18, 2024

REVIEW OF ALL HABITATS

7:30 am Kamelands – Review of all Habitats. We will depart for Kamelands, a loop trail at the Highlands Nature Sanctuary threading its way along cedar-clad old fields, and narrow corridors of deep forest that line the Rocky Fork Gorge. The old field, edges and deep forest habitats of the Kamelands Trails will allow us to review everything we have learned this week. 

12:00 Break For Lunch and please pack a picnic dinner for our evening field trip.

4:00 Kamama Prairie. We will depart for Kamama Prairie Preserve, owned and managed by the Arc of Appalachia Preserve System. Kamama is one of Ohio’s best prairie remnants, and protects one of the rarest prairie communities. The preserve has 27 plant species on Ohio’s endangered species list, a phenomenal number for one location. The preserve is a great place to review birds of the edge and grassland habitats, and it is rare to go to Kamama and not go home with something special on your checklist. 

7:30 Picnic Dinner at Kamama Prairie

Evening Program: Nocturnal Birds in the field. After having a picnic dinner in the field, we will let dusk settle around us, listening to the cricket frogs sound off around the pond, watch the bats rise up to feed the open meadows, and, if we are lucky, hear the rare courting song of the chuck will’s widow.

SUNDAY, MAY19, 2024

CONCLUSION

9:00 Informal Review. Meet at the Appalachian Forest Museum to join your assigned small group to review what you have learned. Along with your designated partners, you will take a walk along the lovely Valley of the Ancients and Etawah Woods trials and practice recognizing the songs of the birds that you hear, encouraged by the mentorship of  your newly established friends.

10:30 Bird Song Quiz. This is it!! Now you will establish for yourself just how much you’ve learned. We guarantee you that you will be amazed at your progress and the breadth of new levels of skill.

Graduation & Certificates