The Boreal Songbird Initiative is sponsoring a team of North
America's top birders which will compete May 14th in the world's
most competitive birding event, the World Series of Birding (WSB) to
help highlight North America's greatest bird conservation
opportunity, The Boreal Forest. The WSB is a grueling 24-hour
(midnight-to-midnight) marathon of skill, planning, and endurance
that pits teams of the world's best birders in a sleep-deprived mad
dash across the state with the goal of identifying more species of
birds in the allotted time than any other team. The competition
takes place in New Jersey, one of the country's premiere birding
areas during spring. Teams race from the state's northern highlands
to its southern ocean beaches, in the process often logging over 600
miles and stopping at 80-100 birding locations.



Now you can be a part of this event and help support the Boreal
Songbird Initiative by sponsoring our Boreal Birders team. It is
easy:

Pledge an amount for each species of boreal bird that is identified.
The Boreal Birders expect to find at least 200 species (in this case
a $.20 per species donation would equal a $40 donation). Any amount
is welcome.
Persons who pledge at least $0.50 per bird will receive a call from
the team during the event to update them if they wish.
BSI is also sponsoring a contest to guess the number of boreal
birds, from the 260 featured BSI's online guide
(http://www.borealbirds.org/birds.html), that the team will identify
on the World Series.


Please email us at info at borealbirds.org with your pledge amount and
email address. We will contact you to let you know your final
donation amount once the WSB has concluded. If you want to track
the event as it approaches, and to find out more about the contest
and prizes, please go to our blog at
http://www.borealbirds.org/blog/ where our team captain will be
posting new updates about the WSB. (Our Team captain is Jeff Wells,
BSI's senior scientist, who previously competed in the World Series
of Birding for 12 years as a member of the elite Cornell Lab of
Ornithology team, winners of the event twice during Wells' tenure
with the team.)



Thanks in advance for helping us to raise awareness and promote
protection of the Boreal Forest and the birds that breed there.

Teddy Kott
Boreal Songbird Initiative