By Antonieta Valenzuela
The 2nd Bahía de Todos Santos Bird Festival was held on Saturday, March 10, 2018 in Playa Hermosa, Ensenada, and before the event different activities were offered as part of the efforts to raise awareness about migratory shorebirds.
Practical mural workshop
The week of activities began on March 6 with the workshop given by the artist Esther Gámez, which culminated with two murals called Vuelo (flight in Spanish) that are now exhibited permanently on the beach of Playa Hermosa, in Ensenada.
The inauguration of the murals took place during the festival and acknowledgments were given to the 7 workshop participants.
One of the murals shows a sanderlig (Calidris alba) and the other a red knot (Calidris canutus roselaari), both are migratory species that breed in the Arctic in the summer and migrate to spend the winter in different places in northwestern Mexico, such as the coasts of Ensenada and San Quintín.
Cinema club
On March 6th in the afternoon, the cinema club was held in the auditorium of Museo Caracol, in this free event the documentary “Sin fronteras” by Jazmín Benítez Reyes was shown.
At the end, the short film “Piper” by Disney Pixar was also shown, it tells a story about a sanderling (Calidris alba), a species that can be seen in Bahía de Todos Santos, in Ensenada.
Beach cleanup in Playa Hermosa
Two cleanups were held in Playa Hermosa before the festival, the first one was on May 8 and the students of the Technological High School of Baja California participated. The second cleanup was held on March 9 where students of Conalep High School participated.
In both days we managed to collect a significant amount of garbage and thanks to the participation of the students, we also had the support of ZOFEMAT and the councilor Jorge Emilio Martínez.
Lectures
The last activity was on March 10 in CEARTE, where a series of lectures were presented. The keynote speaker that night was Gorgonio Ruiz Campos with the presentation “Avifauna of the Sierra San Pedro Mártir”, also participated Ernesto Salmerón of Contacto Salvaje, Isabel Raymundo of the birdwatching club Los Correcaminos and Abril Heredia, a graduate student in Marine Ecology at CICESE. All gave presentations about their bird conservation projects.
In the event I had the opportunity to present the talk “Sharing experiences in Alaska” with my partner Jorge Andrade to share the experience we had in May 2017 at the Copper River Delta Shorebird Festival in Cordova, Alaska, this as part of a project with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CCA)
We thank all the people who accompanied us in the activities and for being part of this important effort to protect migratory birds.
See you in the next festival!
