Mother’s Day at Hillman Marsh
Celebrate
the migration
with family!
Looking for an interesting way to celebrate
Mother’s Day last year, Mandy Furtado and her
four-year- old daughter Mia attended the Shorebird
and Songbird Celebration at Hillman Marsh
Conservation Area in Leamington.
“It was just fantastic to celebrate Mother’s Day
with my daughter at this event,” Mandy enthuses.
“We love to be outdoors and in nature, but we’d
never been to a birding event before. Mia got to
hold a banded bird in her
hand and release it back
into the wild.
“We really learned so
much!”
The event has many
family friendly activities
including a ‘Walk Like a
Shorebird’ game for kids,
and a Flat Bird hike.
The marsh comes alive
each spring as flocks of
shorebirds take rest in the mudflat habitat.
“The managed shorebird habitat provides an
important migration stopover for thousands of
sandpipers and plovers, as well as for rarer shorebirds such as Avocets and Marbled Godwits,”
explains Danielle Breault Stuebing, ERCA’s director
of community outreach services.
“The astonishing journey of many of these spring
migrants begins as far away as Central and South
American to nesting grounds as far northward as
the Eastern Canadian Arctic.”
For your chance to see songbirds up close and
view these migrating shorebirds over the mudflats,
join us for the 2015 Spring Shorebird and Songbird
Celebration May 9-10 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Of course, one of the event’s main attractions
is the banding demonstrations led by the Holiday
Beach Migration Observatory.
8 Windsor Parent - May/June 2015
Mandy Furtado and her daughter Mia
release a banded warbler back into the
wild at the Hillman Marsh Shorebird
and Songbird Celebration.
“This is a unique opportunity to see beautiful songbirds up close as they are banded and
released,” adds Breault Stuebing.
“Our region is geographically so special that birders from around the world flock to the Leamington
area every spring. But you don’t have to have specialized birding knowledge to enjoy this celebration
outdoors with your family – it’s really geared to
everyone.”
Bird ambassadors
New this year, thanks to a generous donation,
Wild Ontario, a live-animal environmental education program based at the University of Guelph,
will bring their bird ambassadors to the Festival.
A full schedule of walks, talks and other activities
is available online at ERCA.org/birding.
Entrance to the park for this special event is just
$10 per vehicle. Annual passes and Hillman Spring
passes are available online, and our joint birding
pass is again being offered in partnership with Point
Pelee National Park, which provides three consecutive days of unlimited entrance to Point Pelee and
Hillman Marsh Conservation Area and can be purchased at Point Pelee from May 1-20.
Hillman Marsh is located at the intersection of
Concession 2 and County Road 37,