World Migratory Bird Day

In January 1971, two oil tankers collided near the Golden Gate Bridge, resulting in an oil spill that stretched for 50 miles along the coast. Volunteers did everything they could to help the 7000 oiled birds, but ultimately only 300 were saved. This tragedy lead to the founding of the International Bird Rescue Research Center in April 1971. They became a pioneer in wildlife rehabilitation techniques and were on hand to help as many of the 250,000+ oiled seabirds as possible following the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. Over the years, International Bird Rescue has continued to rehabilitate birds in their two California locations, one of which is 2 miles from Trevor's school. 

While International Bird Rescue's facility is not open to the public, they hosted an event at the nearby Cordelia Slough on World Migratory Bird Day. Trevor and I went together. Trevor has always loved birds (his Eagle Scout project benefitted the California Raptor Center) and he is strongly considering a career related to wildlife conservation. UC Davis, where he hopes to attend college, has an Avian Sciences minor (and a Master of Science) that really interests him. 

We had a great time at the WMBD event and learned a lot. The best part was looking through a scope at some white dots in a distant tree. We were shocked to learn that they were nesting egrets! I did my best to take a photo through the telescope lens, which I used on this scrapbook page.

World Migratory Bird Day (affiliate link)

I put this layout together in a completely different way than I normally do. I started with the bird sticker and speech bubble and built the rest of the page under those. 99.9% of the time I start with photos, but in this case I stuck down the stickers first, then trimmed photos to fit beneath them. I added the title and the other sticker in the lower right, then made a journal card for the empty space. The last thing I did was add the sentiment, arrow, and date stickers. It felt weird, to be honest, but it was a good creative stretch for me. 

I'm counting this for the 3-photo space on my BASH-O card. Here's what it looks like so far:

I'm not sure what my next layout will be, but there's a good chance it will feature stamps or punches.