The Marion County Conservation Department will host its second Building Better Birders and Citizen Scientists Workshops on Friday and Saturday. 

The program is geared towards families and is a come and go event designed to create a community with better bird identification skills and promote participants to get involved with local citizen science projects. Marion County Naturalist Marla Mertz says that Kelly McKay with the BioEco Research and Monitoring Center will conduct Friday’s Session on nocturnal raptors in Iowa.

“He is going to be presenting some things about the nocturnal Raptors of Iowa, and then we will have an owl prowl. That begins on Friday at 5 pm and ends at 8:30 pm. So, the first part will be a presentation, the next will be outside in a little chilly weather and calling in owls and seeing what we can find and hear.”

Also helping with the workshops will be Mark Roberts with Clinton County Conservation, and Brian Ritter and James Wiebler with the Nahant Marsh Education Center. In addition to Friday’s sessions, there will be two sessions on Saturday from 10-11:30 am and 12:30-2 pm. 

The Building Better Birders and Citizen Scientists Workshops will be held at the Cordova Park Office at 1378 Highway G28 in Otley. Learn more about the workshop here.