Albert Wisner Public Library creates a multi-sensory birding experience for all ages

A successful collaboration by the Albert Wisner Public Library, community donors, and volunteers from the Orange County Audubon Society brings a new, public educational birding opportunity to the library located at 1 McFarland Drive in Warwick.
Ten new bird nest boxes, an informational bird-themed StoryWalk located along a grassy path and an interactive touch board art piece featuring bird images and songs offers a multi-sensory birding experience both indoors and outdoors at the library.
As part of the AWPL Foundations’s 2018/19 annual appeal, donors sponsored the purchase and installation of ten new bird nest boxes in early April. Nest box selection and installation was overseen by Orange County Audubon Society.
The nest boxes, suitable for various cavity nesting songbirds such as Eastern Bluebirds, Wrens and Chickadees, are a long term installation on the library grounds.
The library’s popular outdoor StoryWalk currently features a “Birds in our Warwick Backyard” exhibit with photos, identification tips and information about the habits of common backyard birds found in Orange County.
The bird StoryWalk exhibit will be on display through the end of July.
Inside the library, artist and Orange County Audubon Society volunteer James Van Gelder painted a beautiful interactive touch board art piece featuring 10 common backyard birds.
Using conductive paints, the art piece has an interactive surface enabling patrons to touch each bird and hear the bird’s song. This board when it is installed later in June will be part of a new library collection entitled Warwick’s Backyard.
Warwick’s Backyard collection is located in the rear of the library’s main floor overlooking the library grounds. It includes books and other forms of media covering regional natural history topics such as flora, fauna, geology, backyard building and beekeeping, animal husbandry, stargazing and more.
The Orange County Audubon Society is a volunteer bird and wildlife conservation organization working to foster appreciation and conservation of all aspects of the environment.
In Orange County, the society is the steward for five bird and wildlife sanctuaries.