Saturday, April 28, 2007

Daniel Island Amazing Race


The Audubon Center at the Francis Beidler Forest provided a pit stop for the Creative Spark Center for the Arts' Amazing Race. The event was a treasure hunt on bicycles and Daniel Island’s bike trails were the setting.

Contestants began at Blackbaud Stadium and rode from location to location doing tasks and getting clues. The Beidler Forest stop was at a narrow beach along the Wando River overlooking the I-526 bridge. The task was identifying bird songs. Eight Audubon singing birds were wrapped in plastic. Contestants needed to correctly identify five of the eight bird songs. Contestants would squeeze the bird and listen to the song. A list of more than eight songs (written as mnemonics) was provided to aid in the identification. Pete Schwantes, one of the seasonal naturalists at Beidler Forest, was on hand to check the answers and verify that the task was successfully completed.

It was another gorgeous day in the Lowcountry and hopefully a few more people became excited about our resident bird populations! If you're interested in seeing and hearing colorful songbirds in their natural environment, now is a wonderful time to visit the swamp! Yesterday, visitors were treated to Prothonotary Warblers building their nests in Bald Cypress knees.

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