Catherine Shaw

And then the ball was kicked and the game went on and I thought, my work is done.

Can I say hello bird friends in other schools?

Yes, you have permission to lean into that.

Hear it from Kirsty and hear it from me on behalf of the children who are in your schools.

Yes, lean into that thing.

And children need adults who are passionate about things.

Kids need adults who are passionate about birds to help open that up to them.

I would say start with what you have at your school.

One of the reasons I think birding has taken off so well is because birds come to us.

You know, it's cool to be a kid who's into snakes, but not that many snakes rock into your school grounds on a regular basis.

And if they do, there's a whole procedure around that thing.

Whereas birds fly into our schools all the time.

So start there.

I think most children in Australia actually can't tell you the difference between a magpie and a butcher bird.

And if they can tell a magpie versus a butcher bird, they probably can't tell you whether it's a pied butcher bird or a grey butcher bird.

So start there.

Start with noticing and naming what comes to our schools.

And then stretch out from there just a little bit.

If you do go on an excursion, and not everyone goes on 20 excursions a year like all of our students do at the nature school, but when you do get to go out of the school grounds, talk about what you might see before you get there.

We often make bingo charts here for the top 10 species we're likely to see when we go to a place, just to help children make that connection between, I saw a thing, and when I look at the page, yes, that was it.