Audubon Florida Important Bird Area Coordinator Marianne Korosy and Audubon Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuaries Sanctuary Manager Mark Rachal  and Wanda Dean, Education Chair of St. Petersburg Audubon Society, partnered with Sierra Club’s Inner City Kids Outings (ICO) program  for a half-day learning adventure at Cypress Point Park in Tampa on November 3. Rocky Milburn, ICO Tampa Bay program Chair, was once a seasonal Audubon employee so the morning was “all in the family” in a sense.

The group of 24 fifth-graders from Academy Prep School in St. Pete along with teachers, parents, and Sierra Club ICO volunteers were divided into two groups for activities. Each group completed both activities before the morning was over.

Marianne and Wanda set up a demonstration area on the beach with Black Skimmer and Least Tern decoys simulating a beach-nesting bird colony surrounded by a protection perimeter of posts, signs, and twine. The kids gathered around for an introduction about how to recognize seabirds and shorebirds that have laid eggs directly on the sand, respecting areas marked and posted for beach-nesting birds, and about the various types of human and predator disturbances that flush the adult birds off their nests which can kill the eggs or tiny chicks in the hot summer sun.

Returning to a nearby picnic shelter, each of the kids received two hard-boiled eggs to paint with watercolors – one egg to look like a shorebird egg and another egg to be painted with their individual artistic discretion. Egg painting is always a hit with the kids and even some of the parents and volunteers joined in!

When all eggs were painted, the group returned to the beach nesting demonstration area where the kids created nests and placed their eggs in the sand. At closure, we gathered around the perimeter and discussed which eggs would be most visible to a predator and which eggs would go unseen and likely be stepped on if the area was not marked off with posts, signs, and twine.

This egg-painting activity is included in the almost-released Audubon Adventures kit “Sharing Our Shores”. Classroom kits are scheduled to be released by November 30. For more information, please click here.

Funding for Audubon’s outreach efforts through these coastal programs was generously provided by the Jessie Ball DuPont Foundation.