Children’s Museum of Brownsville

Tuesday, June 18th, children in a summer enrichment program by the Children’s Museum of Brownsville, Texas, had lots of fun participating in a day of citizen science around Dean Porter Park, near the museum. Equipped with the Celebrate Urban Birds species sheets and Texas Parks & Wildlife checklists, the kids spotted lots of birds, like Laughing Gulls, Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks, Double-crested Cormorants, and, a rare sight in the US given the species’ quite small range in south Texas, Great Kiskadees.

Jennifer Williams, Education Director at the Children’s Museum of Brownsville, told us, “My students were so excited about this project and they had a wonderful time today. In fact, they have asked me to find more Citizen Science Projects that they can participate in!” The Brownsville Herald ran a story on the event, focusing on eight-year-old Irene de La Fuente, one of the participants in the Brite Minds Summer Enrichment Program, who dreams of becoming a ‘superstar birder’ and is proud of the wealth of species in the Rio Grande Valley that birders from all over the place come to find.

You can watch the participants at work through the coverage of the event by News Center 23 of the Rio Grande Valley. A day like this seems to match the Children’s Museum’s motto, “Introducing children to a world of learning through discovery and imagination,” quite perfectly! We hope the children participating in the Museum’s summer program get to experience more events like this one.