Organizing the Birds’ Day

Every year after winter holidays all the members of the Viking-Nevo club starting to prepare for the Birds’ Week and the Parks’ March. During that time the competition for the best nestling places, environmental and forest reports, pictures, wall newspapers and posters is organizing.

The Viking-Nevo club provides a number of city schools and the winners of the previous year with the saw-timber, nails, paper, paints and so on. The pupils make the competitive materials during the school lessons or at home. The activists of the Viking-Nevo club help in organizing the methodical and practical works.

The conditions of the competition are not only the formal knocking together of six planks one of which is with the hole, but also the creative realization the ideal home for a bird. As a result the nestling places of the Viking-Nevo club are the best in Smolensk region. The club-members make the safe standard houses as well as non standard models of two- and three-storied houses, hexahedral houses with the garret for two birds’ families, houses with the patterned carving and many others. Every year the Viking-Nevo club-members make more than 120 nestling places which are hanged in the school gardens, in the club’s forestry and in the national park “Smolensk Lakes”.

Hanging the nestling places is no less difficult than its making, and using the children’s help during the hanging process carries heavy responsibilities to the teachers. The Viking-Nevo club developed the special instructions and trains children successfully. As a result by the middle of March the club has 3-4 groups of technically prepared and equipped young people.

In 1999 the Viking-Nevo club was awarded in the Russian competition “Bird’s Day” with the diploma and the prize of the Federal Forestry Agency. In 2000 the Viking-Nevo club was called as one of the three best organizations in Russia and awarded with the diploma and the binoculars by the Russian Bird Conservation Union and the “Anthill” magazine.