Svobodny’s birding competition’s winners have been announced

5 july 2022

The results of Svobodny’s inaugural birding competition held earlier among local schoolchildren are in! The first and the second prizes were taken by the contestants representing IT Cube, a Children’s Digital Education Center.

The “gold” prize went to the VZLETAYEM (TAKING WING) team. Its members correctly identified three bird species out of the five captured on camera. Silver was taken by Pevchiye Ptitsy (The Songbirds) who guessed two bird species out of two. Bronze was awarded to the Golubi (The Pigeons) team made up of fifth-graders representing local School No. 8. who also managed to recognize two species of out of the three birds they had photographed.

The contestants who took part in the inaugural birding competition in Svobodny really showed their passion for events of this kind. Judging by the size of the area where the contest’s events took place, it would be fair to say that this might be one of the hardest routes one could choose as the schoolchildren and their teachers had to explore two parks and a riverbank area near the Zeya River, Elena Snezhko, chief expert, head of the Formula for Good Deeds social investment program, noted.

The 8 participating team spent three hours spotting and photographing birds only to spend even more time at home to try and identify the species they represented. Their efforts were then judged by professional ornithologists. The contestants’ cameras caught a total of 8 bird species, including Ciconiiformes, Columbiformes, Picidae, and Passeriformes: a grey heron, a rock dove, a great spotted woodpecker, a raven, a Eurasian nuthatch, a Eurasian tree sparrow, a Daurian redstart, and a magpie.