Posted on

Art Show to Benefit the Bird Center

We have some exciting news to share! It’s been a hard summer not being able to do any public fundraising. We enjoy meeting people, we have missed discussing our mission or finding new volunteers, and donations are lower due to the lack of public events.

Local artist Lindsey Dahl has put together a socially distanced art event, and we would love for you to come! A Rare Find, an outdoor event featuring 30 local artists, kids activities and more, will take place on October 10th from 11am – 8pm. The event is across the street from the Sandhill Crane Winery in Jackson.

For more information, please visit the Facebook event page, and we hope you can come! The Bird Center will have a table at the event all day with items to purchase and information to be shared, along with 50% of the proceeds being donated to us from the event’s sales!

Posted on

Online Volunteer Orientation

We have great news on a way to virtually connect with you! We will be training volunteers in May in small amounts, so we need to discuss our protocols and policies for COVID 19 with you. However, under the ordinance, we can’t meet up yet for an in-person orientation, so we would like to help train you… online!

Join us this Saturday, April 18th at 10:00am on Zoom. We’ll be chatting for about a hour to hour and a half about all the things for whenever we may be able to be together again this season!

Birds still need help during the spring and summer, and they don’t stop needing help in our time of crisis, so we must continue our work in the safest ways possible. The help from our volunteers is essential and beneficial for us to run and operate effectively.

If you would like to be part of our online orientation, or for more information, please email our Volunteer Coordinator at: birdteamvolunteer@gmail.com to RSVP with your name.  You can also fill out our official form and application right here on the website.

Posted on

Bird Center Events Canceled

We don’t like being the bearer of disappointing news, but sadly we have some:

We have made the decision to cancel our Volunteer Orientation AND our Annual Flyaway Fundraiser.

At this time, it is in everyone’s best interest for safety and health reasons to not have our two upcoming in-person events. We don’t know if the stay at home regulation will be extended or not, but regardless, we will be canceling. Thank you for understanding, and please stay safe!

Fundraiser:

For now, this event will be postponed. We hope to have it later this summer or early fall when times will hopefully be better.

If you are able, we are still needing donations from our Amazon Wishlist or donations via Paypal so we can operate throughout the summer. Without having the fundraiser, we will be losing out on a lot of our season start-up fund.

Volunteer Orientation:

If you are interested in helping us this season, you can download the application from our website and submit it via email. We will have volunteers on a limited schedule starting in May, and allowing only one volunteer to help at a time. We will have other guidelines and check points to follow during this time. We will have gloves and masks for anyone inside the building.

Once you send in an application, you will receive via email everything you would at the in-person orientation. We are going to try to host a Zoom chat on 4/18, and we will keep you posted about it!

Posted on

COVID-19 Update and BC Events Rescheduled

Update 4/8/2020: We have made the decision to cancel our Volunteer Orientation AND our Annual Flyaway Fundraiser. Please see the following post for more details:

Bird Center Events Canceled

To our Bird Center community and supporters:

The Bird Center of Michigan would like to address the COVID-19 outbreak and our plan. Our clinic director and board members met on Saturday, March 14th, to discuss all options.

At this time we do not have active volunteers in the Center. We have two staff members and our director in the Center part-time tending to birds. We do not plan to start training volunteers or interns until mid to late April, when hopefully this virus slows down. Before our move back this week, we used an ozone neutralizer for sanitization and sterilization purposes. For 24 hours it cleansed the Center, and then we aired it out. Our birds are in a fresh, clean environment, as are the staff.

We will continue to follow all sanitation protocols in the Center over the next few months, however we are open to accept birds. This time of year is when we often see collisions and early hatchlings in need. Please call us if you need assistance – 734.761.9640. We will be going to full-time hours come mid-April. It is important for us to provide proper care for our current patients and any others in need.

We are following the City of Ann Arbor’s instructions to withhold any public event over 50 people until after April 6th. Most activities and events around the campus in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are being suspended for 30 days.