The Ellis Bird Farm will be hosting their Bluebird Festival this Saturday July, 9th and there are tons of fun activities on the docket.  

“All day, we're going to have some nature themed crafts going on. Face painting it's more like face stamping. It's done by me... We're going to talk about some owl pellets and they can build birdhouses on site all day and then as well there will be some silent auctions going on too,” said Amy Ji, Education and Administrative Coordinator at the Ellis Bird Farm.  

The farm is a local bird conservation area located off of Highway 12 on Range Road 260.  

“We are focusing on the conservation of farming as well as cavity nesting birds. Cavity nesting birds, meaning that you know like instead of having an open nest like eagles do, they'll find a cavity such as dead Woods, or like the trees, eggs and then have a nest in there. Some of these birds are blue birds, purple martins. These are the two that we really focus on,” explained Jin.  

Blue birds are important to the Ellis Bird Farm because the farm’s orginial owner’s Charlie and Winnie Ellis who rimmed their farm with 300 nest boxes for the blue birds and swallows. The pair had a particular affinity for blue birds and spent a lot of time and effort helping native birds.  

In addition to celebrating the farm, there will also be plenty of opportunities to learn about the birds on site.  

“We're going to have other groups such as Strix Ecological coming out and they're going to do a song bird banding demonstration. Our Purple Martin Conservancy volunteer, John will be out here in the morning and he'll be showing the purple martin nest and demonstrating what we do here with our purple martin nest and how we do that. There will be our research consultant out here too. She's going to be giving talks and demonstrations too,” said Jin.  

Here’s a full schedule of the event this weekend:  

Photo of scheduleImage courtesy of Ellis Bird Farm.