Lloyd Center Feathery Focus 2025 Wrap-Up
Another season of Feathery Focus has come to an end. The 2025 Feathery Focus programming was a great success! Our education team of Liz, Amanda, Bruce & Shannon enjoyed teaching local elementary students around the Southcoast community. This year our schools included the Joseph DeMello, James M. Quinn & George M. Potter Elementary Schools in Dartmouth, Spencer Borden Elementary & Alfred S. Letourneau Elementary Schools in Fall River, and the Alfred J. Gomes Elementary School in New Bedford.
During the academic year, the Center’s Education Staff visits the schools once a month for an hour, to discuss various topics regarding birds, their habitats, and unique traits birds have to survive and thrive. Birds are used as a way to introduce larger science concepts due to the accessibility of safe observations of these common wild animals. All lessons are interactive, using slide shows and audio clips to enhance the lessons being provided to the students, such as “What is a Bird?”, “Beak Adaptations”, “Field Marks & Habitats”, “Feathers & Migration”, and “Bird Songs”.
The programs conclude with a two-hour field trip to the Lloyd Center’s campus. The field trips to the Lloyd Center are a fantastic way for our students to become immersed in “real life” bird interactions! They take a walk through the forest to identify possible nesting sites. The Field Mark station provides the opportunity to see the birds discussed in their classrooms and highlights the individual, unique patterns and colors which aid birders in identifying the great variety of local species.
Students collect data at the Counting Station by making observations from the Center’s main building to the adjacent feeders. This data is used by the students to create graphs to better understand the feeding activity of different species at different times of the day. Each group rotates through the various stations taught by different members of the Education staff.
The trip concludes with the students getting to meet an actual bird! In years past they have met a Screech Owl or a Plymouth Barred Rock chicken. This year’s star is BLUEY! Bluey was provided by Gaelen Canning. Bluey is a 1 ½ year old Peking duck. This species dates back over 1,000 years! They are a large, friendly, calm species with beautiful white feathers. They are a fantastic breed for small farms and love, especially the females, to chatter with humans. Having a bird for the students to meet really helps to set the lessons we have taught all year. We reconnect with bird traits and concepts we have learned during the programs and applied them to our star, “Bluey”. Beak structure, feather types, diet, foot type, needed habitat requirements, and communication are all addressed. Seeing all the smiling faces all day as we visit the stations is the best part of our day! Here’s to an awesome 2025 season!