Date: 5/13/2019

Title: FA Enters Birdhouse Competition

With the help of students in the Industrial Technology program at Ames High School, who built the birdhouses for us, we were able to participate in the City of Ames' Public Arts Commission 2019 Arts in the Parks Birdhouse Competition this spring. The goals of the birdhouse competition were to:

Encourage construction of functional and aesthetically pleasing birdhouses
Encourage the use of environmentally sensitive materials
Demonstrate ways to attract wildlife by creating unique backyard and park habitats
Inspire creativity in backyard and park habitats
Encourage artistic and hand-crafted approaches to birdhouse design
Help support our students, children, families, and community
Have Fun!

All of the birdhouses were on display at the Octagon Center for the Arts for some time and some of them were then installed at city parks. The Octagon partnered with SOAR for a presentation about their mission and raptors in Iowa. The screech owl helped participants learn about cavity nesters and the importance of birdhouses.

It was great to be able to collaborate with so many different community organizations for this project. Friendship Ark core members had a lot of fun participating in this event.