Bird-a-thon 2012

Let's hear it for the birds!

May 11 - May 12

This year Mass Audubon will celebrate its 29th Bird-a-thon beginning at 6 P.M. Friday, May 11, 2012 and concluding at 5:59 P.M. on Saturday, May 12, 2012. We will have 28 teams enthusiastically birding and raising money for our wildlife sanctuaries and programs. You can participate by joining one of these teams!

Many of you have asked how Bird-a-thon started, so we have prepared a short history of Mass Audubon’s Bird-a-thon - 1983-2012. The first unofficial Bird-a-thon occurred in 1982 when a group of Mass Audubon staff including Jim Baird, Chris Leahy, Dave Clapp, Dick Forster and Jerry Bertrand headed out at 2:30 am on a cold, wet and windy May morning to bird in Essex county for 24 hours to raise funds for Bird Conservation at Mass Audubon. Over the next 24 hours, the team recorded 160 species, including a black-necked stilt sighted only 10 times previously in Massachusetts.

The very next year this team of five illustrious birders was challenged by an unlikely group of three not-so-illustrious fundraisers from Mass Audubon’s headquarters staff and the first competitive Bird-a-thon was born!

In the ensuing years, thousands of volunteers and staff have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the operating needs of Mass Audubon across the state. In fact, Bird-a-thon is Mass Audubon’s single, largest, annual fundraising event. In 2012, our 28th Bird-a-thon raised more than $205,000 for wildlife sanctuaries and programs.

You can help make this the most successful Bird-a-thon ever! Please join a team and come bird with us!

For more information, contact birdathon@massaudubon.org or 781-259-2133.