Category Archives: Young Birders

BCFO Young Birder Awards 2023

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Once again BCFO is delighted to present this year’s Young Birder Award recipients. As flag carriers for the future of birding they are both notable ambassadors, and outstanding young people. The BCFO Young Birder Award welcomes talented young birders into the BC birding community providing them with recognition, opportunity, encouragement, and mentoring.

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BCFO Young Birder Awards 2022

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The BCFO Young Birder Award welcomes talented young birders into the BC birding community providing them with recognition, opportunity, encouragement, and mentoring.

The Young Birder Awards are presented to youth who meet certain qualifications. To be selected for a BCFO Young Birder Award, recipients must be between 11 and 18 years of age, and have:

•  exceptional observational and birding skills well beyond the ‘novice’ level;
•  shown substantive engagement in the activities of the birding community through their accomplishments, participation, and contributions;
•  been nominated and sponsored by a BCFO member, and approved by the Board of Directors.

2022 is the eighth year of the BCFO Awards Program as we continue to find many young, keen, committed birders from around BC. Each recipient receives a free membership to BCFO until age 18, a memorial plaque, and a stylish BCFO ball cap.

Congratulations go to James Park who joins the ranks of a very talented and growing group of British Columbia young birders.

jamespark

In nominating James, Carlo Giovanella says:

James Park is from Korea, and has been birding around the Lower Mainland for about two years.  When I first met him, at age 13, he told me he came there specifically because he “wanted to be an ornithologist”.  To that end his mother has brought him here so he can get Canadian schooling.  Since arriving he has become known to most of the birding community, as he shows up at all ‘rare’ sightings.

In the field, James is exceptionally motivated and focused.  He approaches bird-finding with skills that are well advanced for his age, and he can identify most birds  immediately by sight and by sound.  He understands when IDs are difficult, and carefully tries to work them out, freely asking and accepting help from others.   James usually birds alone, and submits many reports to eBird, (97 lists, 232 species in 2021) which demonstrates that he finds lots of ‘good’ birds.

I am taking the role of his sponsor/nominator because he generally birds alone, and does not have an on-going relationship with any other BCFO member.  I  have met and interacted with him in the field on three occasions, and each time was impressed by his relative-to-age skills, and the rapid progress he is making.  There is no doubt that this young lad has birding skills well beyond what we would consider a threshold for our Award.

Another BCFO Young Birder Success Story

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Adam Dhalla, Young Birder Award recipient in 2017, has been working hard to merge his love of birds with his love of gaming. The result of his efforts and those of his co-creator, has just been released on the Apple App Store, and on Google Play.

Find the Birds is a free-to-download, free-to-play educational mobile game for all ages about birds & conservation.

Players travel the globe searching for birds and do conservation quests to help them. The first in-game location available in the release is Arizona, USA, and includes the critically endangered California Condor in its line-up of species. The second in-game location will be British Columbia, to be added this July.

Find the Birds is a great way for all ages to learn about nature & science safely during the pandemic in an environmentally friendly way. Games are of course zero-carbon.


Apple App Store full download link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/find-the-birds/id1555789387

Or, you can search for Find the Birds.

Google Play Store download link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ThoughtGenerationSociety.FindtheBirds 

Congratulations to Adam on this significant achievement. And as a footnote, it’s worth recalling that after Adam received the BCFO award in 2017 he went on to become recipient of the 2018 American Birding Association Young Birder of the Year Award.