LOWER FREDERICK PA – Tips on how Lower Frederick Township residents and others can join the Great Backyard Bird Count later this month will be offered Feb. 11 (2024; Sunday) by Wyncote Audubon Society President Leigh Altadonna. She will be a featured guest from 1-2:30 p.m. in the township building, 53 Spring Mount Rd., for a discussion on bird watching.
The talk is free to attend and open to the public. Participants are asked to register in advance online, so the township can distribute any updates or alerts about the program in case of inclement weather.
The bird count, scheduled for the weekend of Feb. 16-19, is an annual international effort to take a near-real-time census of what birds are found where, and in what numbers. The fun and free winter activity is considered one of “the world’s largest biodiversity-related participatory science” projects. It began in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.
Altadonna will talk about the project, and how participants – many of them with little earlier experience – can identify and document the birds they observe. Additionally, if weather permits, those attending the discussion can enjoy “a brief bird walk in the woodland edge” behind its building, according to a township e-mail.
Individuals interested in the walk are recommended to bring binoculars, or borrow a pair at the event while supplies last. Participants will receive an identification sheet of common local birds to take home.
Lower Frederick’s ‘Bird Town’ designation
The township Board of Supervisors during July 2023 unanimously agreed to ask that Lower Frederick be officially designated as a Pennsylvania Bird Town. The township’s application was accepted later in the summer, and Bird Town PA President Heidi Shiver appeared during the board’s Oct. 3 meeting to congratulate its newest municipal member.
Events surrounding the bird count, and others during the year, are being planned as part of the township’s Bird Town activities. Other nearby Bird Town Pennsylvania municipalities include Red Hill Borough, and Marlborough and Upper Salford townships. Across the greater Philadelphia region, Lower Frederick notice added, a total of 44 municipalities have earned Bird Town designations.
Photo of a tufted titmouse by Michele Black
for the Great Backyard Bird Count, from the National Park Service
Feb. 11 Sunday, Participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count, 1-2:30 p.m., free, a discussion of bird-watching, and how to join in the international Great Backyard Bird Count set for Feb. 16-19, by Wyncote Audubon Society President Leigh Altadonna, at the Lower Frederick Township Building, 53 Spring Mount Rd., Schwenksville PA
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