Date/Time
Wednesday, Jan 05, 2022
7:00 pm - 8:15 pm
Each May, birders from around the world flock to northwest Ohio for Black Swamp Bird Observatory’s (BSBO) spring birding festival, The Biggest Week in American Birding. Timed to coincide with the peak of songbird migration through the area, the Biggest Week connects birders with one of the greatest concentrations of migratory birds in the Western Hemisphere. In her presentation, Kimberly will explain why the birds are here, and how BSBO built the Biggest Week In American Birding into the largest birding festival in the country. She’ll also discuss how much the visiting birders mean for our local economy, and how the Black Swamp team leverages the event’s economic impact to build support for habitat conservation.
Kimberly Kaufman is an Ohio native whose lifelong love of the outdoors grew into a passion for birds in the 1990s. She monitored nesting Bald Eagles for the Ohio Division of Wildlife and ran bluebird trails before she began banding migrant songbirds for the Black Swamp Bird Observatory . Kimberly became the observatory’s education director in 2005 and then executive director in 2009, a position she still holds. She played a key role in starting the Ohio Young Birders Club and The Biggest Week In American Birding. She is a contributing editor to Birds & Blooms magazine and coauthor of the Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of New England and Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of the Midwest. In addition to her role with BSBO, Kimberly serves on the boards of the American Bird Conservancy, Birdability, and Lake Erie Shores and Islands. In 2015, Kimberly received the American Birding Association’s prestigious Chandler Robbins Award in recognition of her contributions to bird education and conservation. She and her husband Kenn live in northwest Ohio not far from the famed Magee Marsh Wildlife Area.
Categories
