Nesting Bluebirds

This is a ColorMe greeting card I did celebrating Mother’s Day and attempting to encourage participation in NestWatch, a program run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  I hope to encourage kids to color in their own card for their moms, then read the back of the card and get excited about bird watching and nest box monitoring.  It’s a super fun hobby, but also very important that citizen scientists contribute their findings to the lab to help researchers track bird populations and note whether any species are increasing or decreasing in a way that could be a problem.  This helps scientists discover what may be behind fluctuations in population, and think about solutions that could help species recover.  Creating backyard habitat for birds and other wildlife is helpful, too.

I love being a nest box monitor with NestWatch, and hope people of all ages can have fun coloring greeting cards and learning about birds.  Hopefully in the future I can produce more “coloring cards,” and tap into the trending adult coloring books (but sneak in some education, too).  Fun fact: I designed the card before I knew that wooden poles for bird boxes without baffles (predator deterrants) are not such a good idea.  Metal poles with predator guards are much better.  Don’t make your bird box pole look like this, haha!

Because the design would be too hard to color at the small size my printer makes the cards, and since I decided to only print on sustainably sourced paper through that printer, in 2016 I’m only selling full color versions of this former coloring card.  The original intent was to promote citizen science and bird habitat, anyway – the coloring was just an added benefit 😉