Bending the bird curve at Firefly’s first student art exhibit

A modest group of artists and bird lovers got together at the Millbrook School Friday, Feb. 21, for the first ever Firefly student artist showcase.

The exhibition featured art from student artists from private and public high schools in New York and Connecticut including Millbrook School, Housatonic Valley Regional High School, Hotchkiss School, Kent School and South Kent School.

The art covered a wide range of media and subject matter, but all works focused on an appreciation of nature and the environment. Photographs of landscapes and wildlife covered the walls, surrounded by paintings, pottery and sculpture.

The Friday night exhibition opening started out with presentations on bird populations from Marvelwood School students Jonah Maeras-Garcia and Irine Dumitrascu and their avian ambassador program faculty advisor Laurie Doss.

They talked about Marvelwood’s purple martin restoration project.

The purple martin was at one time numerous across the midwest and eastern U.S., but the loss of hollow trees to nest in has reduced the birds’ numbers significantly in the past century.

In 2006 when Marvelwood started the avian ambassador program, student bird researchers counted only a few dozen Martins in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut. Today, after nearly ten years of building and improving martin housing, the Northwest Corner is home to over a thousand purple martins.

Following the presentation from Marvelwood School was the keynote address from Sharon audubon director Eileen Fielding.

The talk, titled “Bending the Bird Curve,” focused on the threat climate change poses to bird habitat in the U.S. and necessary strategies for preserving bird populations.

Fielding said the bird population has decreased by 2.8 billion since 1970 due to pollution and habitat loss.

Continued warming will further shrink bird habitats nationwide, Fielding said. To illustrate this, Fileding showed a model of wood thresh habitat in North America.

The wood thresh, Fielding said, spends winters in South America and migrates to the deciduous forests of the eastern U.S. every summer.

However, deciduous forests are sensitive to rising average temperatures, and much of the habitat for the wood thresh faces serious threats from just a three degree Celsius jump in global average temperatures.

After the talk, the group of students and naturalists walked through the cold, dark night across Millbrook’s campus to the exhibit hall where the art was on display. Student artists ate cheese, strawberries and spoke with the visitors about their art projects.