Barbara Duerksen

Welcome to my Great Wisconsin Birdathon fundraising page. I am a member of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology and the Kickapoo Valley Bird Club. For this birdathon, I am supporting the Richland Center – Santa Teresa Sister City Project in its efforts to promote bird research and education in the tropical dry forest of Nicaragua. Please read the Motmot Crew’s team page for details about what the project does there.

I was part of a delegation from Wisconsin that visited the Santa Teresa area in Nicaragua in 2020. It was an honor to be present for the January bird banding event and to meet the biologists, naturalists, students, and nearby villagers who came to participate. It’s always exciting to be a part of the bird banding process --to get up close and personal with these amazing winged and feathered creatures, some of whom had flown perhaps 2000 miles to reach their winter home in the tropical dry forest .

Motmot Crew team members will be out on May 14 to welcome back the migrant birds and tally up the species we find. Please consider supporting our efforts and those of the Bird Protection Fund with a pledge per species or a fixed amount. You can click the Donate button to contribute on-line or by check.

The Nicaraguan staff will be conducting a big day with Chacocente students on the same day as our effort, World Migratory Bird Day. They will compile a list of birds they find. We cannot add those species to our birdathon list, but will include them in the report our donors will receive.

Thank you for joining me in making a sustainable future for birds in Wisconsin and Central America!

Make a donation online by clicking "donate" above, or mail a check to: Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin, ATTN: Great Wisconsin Birdathon, 211 S. Paterson St., Suite 100, Madison, WI 53703 (and include our team's name in the memo line!)