Earth Day 2025 Recap
Submitted by Antje Cripe, Coeur d’Alene Audubon Volunteer & Member
On April 19, Mother Nature provided an authentic out-in-nature context for Earth Day in McEuen Park: there was persistent, soaking RAIN! Nevertheless, dedicated volunteers, Lisa Clark, Linda Wagner, and Antje Cripe, donned appropriate gear and stayed the four-hour course, greeting hardy visitors to the event.
Parents and children stopped by to consider the display of bird nests, houses, and related materials facilitated by Beth Paragamian and Carrie Hugo. The materials belonging to the Bureau of Land Management were particularly fascinating; there were models of various birds' eggs and the skulls of eagles, a robin and a pileated woodpecker (that woodpecker skull seemed impossibly long at almost nine inches).
Interested youngsters were given our traditional pinecone bird feeder kit (two pinecones, birdseed, string, and new paperless QR-coded instructions for constructing these simple inducements to ground feeders).
We referred interested visitors to the continuous-feed cameras focused on the nesting platforms high above us in the park. We were able to marvel at the parenting activities of an osprey pair. (Nearby a smart urban mallard had uncharacteristically selected a second high-elevation platform to set up housekeeping.)
We shared our protective canopy with the Dark Skies participants who, before long, were presenting Audubon's message as well as their own, i.e., the deleterious effects of excessive and ill-managed urban lighting. That fortuitous pairing led us to consider that in the future our display might effectively be clustered with those other like-minded causes such as the Native Plant Society and Wild Wings.
The rain did not dampen the spirits of those who came out for the events. We were grateful to Sorenson School's dancers and drummers who performed and then visited the exhibits.
Rain and all, we counted it as a really good day: great esprit de corps, newly organized displays, further reference to the amazing Audubon website and its QR-coded access. We felt inspired to foster the connections we have, and laid plans for Earth Day 2026 - surely the sun will shine then!
Special thanks to Carrie Hugo of the Bureau of Land Management for the generous loan of the delightful egg and skull replicas and nests—our young visitors were so enchanted, the experience may well have planted the seeds for future careers in biology.