There’s a rustling in the hedgerow, and a fluttering in the branches. In the Caribbean islands, we are starting to hear different voices and our gardens and landscapes are filled with bright new colors. Our “winter visitors” are arriving, and we welcome them every year.

Many may be surprised to learn that the Caribbean is a winter home for dozens of different migratory bird species. Now in its 26th year, International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) highlights the amazing story of these birds and the importance of protecting them. While IMBD events happen across the Western Hemisphere throughout the year, most Caribbean events happen in the October, a particularly busy month for migratory birds in the West Indies.

On St. Martin, the flagship IMBD event is the Migratory Bird Festival. This festival will be held at University of St. Martin on Pond Island from 9am to noon on Sunday, October 16th. Activities will include presentations on a variety of topics, birdwatching, arts and crafts and other interactive activities celebrating our migratory birds and the local habitats that support and sustain them. The event is produced by the Les Fruits de Mer association, with sponsorship support from Yacht Club Port de Plaisance, Lagoonies Bistro and Bar, Hotel L’Esplanade, GEBE, Delta Petroleum, BZSE Attorneys at Law, Buccaneer Beach Bar, Aqua Mania Adventures and ACE.

Environment for the Americas (EFTA) coordinates IMBD across the Western Hemisphere. BirdsCaribbean is the regional organizer, coordinating all kinds of activities throughout the islands. Refuges, parks, museums, schools, botanical gardens and protected areas host events that reach about 100,000 people each year just in the Caribbean.

The 2016 theme is Spread Your Wings for Bird Conservation, in recognition of the Centennial of the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty, which makes it unlawful to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill or sell migratory birds. The treaty does not discriminate between live or dead birds, and also grants full protection to any bird parts including feathers, eggs and nests. Over 800 species are currently on the list of protected birds.

This year IMBD partners seek to highlight how laws, treaties and protected areas help conserve our migratory birds, and what the average citizen can do to help. The beautiful 2016 IMBD poster shows eleven migratory bird species in flight, ten of which have benefited from conservation laws. One of these species is the Whimbrel, one of the widest-ranging shorebirds in the world that can fly for 4,000 kilometers non-stop. The poster was designed by Canada-based artist Lionel Worrell, who spent his early years in the Caribbean.

These delightful birds, that travel so far every year, represent a significant part of the biodiversity of the Americas. They are cause for celebration! BirdsCaribbean invites its friends and partners across the region to engage in activities that will not only help these birds continue to spread their wings across the ocean, for example by preserving their habitats. The IMBD events also aim to educate and inform Caribbean residents (young and not so young) on their remarkable lives.

How many migratory birds can you find on your island this winter? Let’s spread our wings and celebrate our remarkable feathered friends!

There’s no way we could pull off fun, free festivals like the Migratory Bird Festival without the support of our sponsors. We’re very excited to have BZSE as a first-time sponsor this year!

BZSE Attorneys at Law
Quality, continuity and stability are the foundations of the personalized approach by BZSE. In both the civil law as well as in the tax practice, the attorneys and tax lawyers have many years of outstanding service in Sint Maarten. BZSE has grown into the largest law firm in Sint Maarten.
http://www.bzselaw.com

Mark Yokoyama will be presenting on the amazing journeys taken by migratory birds each year. He’ll also be there to give you some bird photography pointers.

Mark is an American naturalist, author and wildlife educator residing on Saint Martin. He has published two editions of The Incomplete Guide to the Wildlife of Saint Martin, the first book of its kind on the island, and is currently working on a guide to the terrestrial wildlife of Sint Eustatius. He is co-founder and Treasurer of the non-profit association Les Fruits de Mer. Les Fruits de Mer activities include public wildlife events, e-books on wildlife subjects, short documentary films, and Amuseum Naturalis, a pop-up natural history museum.

There’s no way we could pull off fun, free festivals like the Migratory Bird Festival without the support of our sponsors. We’re very excited to have ACE as a first-time sponsor this year!

ACE
One of the main players in the field of hardware, building supplies and home appliances on St. Maarten for several decades, it has been the company’s goal to offer consumers quality products and utmost customer satisfaction. ACE also values its social responsibility to the community of St Maarten, and has proven itself in supporting numerous local youth activities, cultural events and fundraisings.
http://www.acesxm.com

We will be on Island 92 FM radio tomorrow (Friday) morning at 9:30am, so head to 91.9 on your so-called dial if you are able to receive radio frequencies on St. Martin or head to their website to stream from afar. We’ll be talking about the upcoming Migratory Bird Festival and, almost surely, much more.

Binkie van Es will be in charge of the birdwatching station at the event, where he’ll be teaching about birds, helping you with some bird photography tips and getting you hooked on birdwatching!

Originally from the Netherlands, Binkie has lived in Sint Maarten since 1986 and became a serious birder over the last few years. He is a member of BirdsCaribbean, a board member of Nature Foundation St. Maarten and a volunteer for EPIC and Les Fruits de Mer. He is also a certified Caribbean Birding Trail Guide and a bird educator and trainer for the BirdSleuth Caribbean program.

Ilja Botha will be presenting at the 2016 Migratory Bird Festival on her experience with birding and nature tourism and giving you the inside scoop on all the best spots to go birding on St. Martin!

Birdwatching tour guide Ilja Botha is born in The Netherlands and moved to St Maarten 8 years go. Her love for all things nature she inherited from her mother who pointed out and named every bird, bug and flower they came across in her youth. Until the beginning of 2016 Ilja worked in sales and marketing in the local scuba diving industry, she recently quit her ‘normal job’ to be able to fully focus on Seagrape Tours, an eco tour company she runs together with her husband David Botha. Ilja is a great example of how we can depend on nature as our livelihood and is a passionate advocate of the preservation of St Maarten’s nature, historical sites and birds.

Are you ready for the 2016 Migratory Bird Festival? We just created posters in English and French. Download, print and post them in your office or school.

As we explored this years theme Restore Habitat, Restore Birds, we were lucky to have some colleagues from Anguilla presenting on one of the most fascinating habitat restoration techniques, the eradication of invasive animals. Devon Carter and Giovanni Hughes of the Anguilla National Trust present Dog Island Restoration Project: From Eradication to Monitoring at Les Fruits de Mer’s 2015 Migratory Bird Festival on St. Martin.

You can also download their presentation (PPT).

Jenn Yerkes presents a French language version of Incredible Journeys: Migratory Birds on St. Martin. This presentation was filmed at the 2015 Migratory Bird Festival on St. Martin in front of a live audience.

Continuing our series is Laura Bijnsdorp from EPIC (Environmental Protection in the Caribbean) presenting about wetland habitats at the 2015 Migratory Bird Festival, hosted by Les Fruits de Mer and University of St. Martin. This presentation was adapted from EPIC’s education program.

You can also download the slides from this presentation (PDF, 2.3MB).

This engaging presentation was given to a standing room only crowd at the Migratory Bird Festival 2015. Dr. Jay Haviser of SIMARC, the St. Maarten Archaeological Center, presents on the heritage of salt on the island of St. Martin. The story of salt on St. Martin is the fascinating story of the island and its people, from prehistory to today.

The presentation was given at University of St. Martin, located on Pond Island in the Great Salt Pond.

You can also download the PowerPoint presentation (5.4MB, PPT).

We had a wonderful roster of presenters at Migratory Bird Festival 2015, and thanks to a generous donation from a Les Fruits de Mer member, we were able to videotape the presentations. We’re going to work on getting the rest of the presentations up soon, and we look forward to doing more (and better!) video work in the future. To kick things off, we have Mark Yokoyama’s presentation Incredible Journeys: Migratory Birds on St. Martin. The video is below and you can also download the presentation and presenter’s notes.

Download the presentation: Presentation (PDF 4MB), Presentation Notes (RTF).

Our happy bird-day and other bird-themed greeting cards were pretty popular at Migratory Bird Festival 2015. Now you can download them for free and make your own! Color and create with these bird-themed cards, created for Migratory Bird Festival 2015. A great activity for people of all ages, everyone can leave with cards to give to friends or family. Their available below and on our Art Activities resources page, where we also have other fun activities.

Download for free: English, 10 designs A4 paper – English, 10 designs, Letter paper – French, 4 designs, A4 paper – French, 4 designs, Letter paper.

Instructions:

1. Print on A4 or Letter card stock.
2. Cut sheets in half using a paper cutter.
3. Color and fold the cards.
4. It is great to provide examples, particularly for the cards with space for drawing your own design.

Here’s another great batch of photos from Migratory Bird Festival 2015. Olivia Roudon has been part of our event team from the beginning, taking fantastic photos. She’s featured prominently in our event photography ebook Look Sharp, which you can download for free!

Looking for more fun photos from Migratory Bird Festival 2015? Well, we’ve got ’em! Here’s another batch from Olivia Roudon.

We wanted to share this great set of photos from Alexandra Gnigler. As volunteers, we are often so busy in one part of the event that we don’t get to see everything else that’s going on until afterward. You can also see more of her photos on our Facebook page.

Olivia Roudon has been a Les Fruits de Mer member since the very beginning and has been shooting photos of our events since the very first one. Here are some of her photos from Migratory Bird Festival 2015 with more to follow!

Over 200 people came out to celebrate St. Martin’s spectacular migratory birds at the 2015 Migratory Bird Festival, which was held Saturday at University of St. Martin. The Migratory Bird Festival is a free, annual public Wildlife Discovery Event created by Les Fruits de Mer for residents and visitors to see and learn about the island’s many migratory species and their extraordinary journeys.

One of the highlights of the event was the Heritage Salt Presentation and Walk led by Dr. Jay Haviser, Director of the St. Maarten Archaeological Center (SIMARC). Attendees flocked to the standing-room-only presentation about the history and cultural heritage of salt on St. Martin, followed by a walking tour of the salt pans and other historic structures visible in the Great Salt Pond, one of the island’s most important heritage sites and bird habitats. An exhibition panel about salt production and history was also on view at the event. “The Great Salt Pond is historically important for both birds and people,” explained Jenn Yerkes, President of Les Fruits de Mer. “These structures that we can still see from the time of salt exploitation–the stone walls, the levees and poles that are tangible traces of a past which is sometimes invisible–also happen to be great places for observing birds and other wildlife. It’s a truly unique intersection of natural and cultural heritage. People really want to engage with their history and culture in ways like this. In fact, Dr. Haviser’s presentation was so crowded it was clear we’ll need a bigger room next time!”

Also extremely popular with eventgoers were the birdwatching tours of the Great Salt Pond, led regularly throughout the Festival by professional birding guide and Nature Foundation Board Member Binkie van Es. Even a sudden heavy cloudburst couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm of people of all ages who learned to use binoculars and bird ID cards to spot Laughing Gulls, Spotted Sandpipers, Great Blue Herons, and other migratory bird species as well as year-round residents like Snowy Egrets, Brown Pelicans, and Magnificent Frigatebirds.

The event’s assembly room was packed throughout the Festival for a series of fascinating multimedia presentations. Special guest presenters from Anguilla National Trust, Devon Carter and Giovanni Hughes, showcased a conservation technique—rat eradication—that has been a resounding success on Anguilla’s Dog Island and could be a solution for threatened populations of birds and other wildlife on St. Martin’s islets. EPIC Environmental Educator Laura Bijnsdorp focused on the wetlands that make St. Martin such a crucial spot for thousands of migratory birds every year. Adults and kids alike got to meet the migratory birds of St. Martin, find out about their amazing voyages, and learn where to find them here on the island from naturalist Mark Yokoyama’s “Incredible Journeys” presentation.

Free Gaïac seedlings were distributed at the Club Gaïac station, where Festival-goers got to know this beautiful endangered heritage tree by looking at cross-sections of its wood, viewing demonstrations of its amazing density, learning about its life cycle and historical uses, and discovering how restoring the island’s native trees like the Gaïac helps birds by restoring their habitats.

Attendees also learned about what happens to St. Martin’s birds and bird habitats during drought at the Shadow of a Drought Exhibition, got an up-close look with microscopes and magnifying boxes at the wetland critters that provide food for migratory birds at the Portable Pond Observation Station, and made hundreds of migratory bird-themed cards at the Happy Bird-day Card art workshop.

Les Fruits de Mer partnered with MadTwoz Association to bring a bus of youth from Sandy Ground to enjoy a day of nature, science, art, and fun at the event. Educators and youth organization leaders who are interested in arranging group trips to future Les Fruits de Mer events are encouraged to contact the association.

“We’re thrilled that everyone had such a great time at this year’s Festival,” said Yerkes. “The experts’ presentations were totally packed, new activities like the Happy Bird-day Card workshop, the Shadow of a Drought Exhibition, and the Heritage Salt Presentation and Walk were a real hit, and Les Fruits had more new member sign-ups than any event yet! We couldn’t have done it without the best volunteers in the world, and our awesome event sponsors, Hotel L’Esplanade, Calmos Cafe, Delta Petroleum and Aqua Mania Adventures.”

Anyone who missed the event can still download the free photo essay eBook Shadow of a Drought and BirdsCaribbean’s free Heritage Plants guide to bird-friendly native Caribbean plants from the Les Fruits de Mer website’s resources page at www.lesfruitsdemer.com.

Les Fruits de Mer’s next Wildlife Discovery Event will be Birds & Bugs 2015, a free celebration of St. Martin’s incredible insects and fantastic forest birds, coming up in early December at Loterie Farm.

We wanted to share a few photos of from the 2015 Migratory Bird Festival. We should have many more on their way in the coming days and we would also love it if you would send us some of your favorite photos from the event. Massive thanks to all our wonderful volunteers, we’re proud to be part of such an awesome team. Many thanks as well to the University of St. Martin and our sponsors: Delta Petroleum, Hotel L’Esplanade, Calmos Cafe and Aqua Mania Adventures!

University of St. Martin’s location on the Great Salt Pond provides the perfect setting for the Festival’s guided walks, where guests get to learn on the go from experts. Avid birder and Nature Foundation board member Binkie van Es will be leading guided bird walks regularly throughout the morning, and launching the Nature Foundation Birding Club. At 9:30am, St. Maarten Archaeological Center (SIMARC) Director Jay Haviser will lead a special Heritage Salt Walk.

“The Great Salt Pond plays a dual role as a key bird habitat and as a cornerstone of the island’s heritage and identity–we’re excited to spotlight both aspects at this event!” explained Les Fruits de Mer President Jenn Yerkes. “We’ve wanted to do this for a long time, and Dr. Haviser is not only an expert, but also has an extraordinary ability to make history come alive. The Heritage Walk will be a really unique opportunity for St. Martiners to engage with their history and culture.”

Festival-goers will meet St. Martin’s migratory birds and learn about their marvelous journeys during a multimedia presentation by naturalist Mark Yokoyama, author of The Incomplete Guide to the Wildlife of Saint Martin. Kids and adults alike will love discovering the stories of these different migrants, from tiny warblers and gregarious shorebirds to the majestic Osprey.

This Migratory Bird Festival is part of an international program including hundreds of events that share the same 2015 theme: Restore Habitat, Restore Birds. This theme will be addressed at the Festival by a series of special presentations and activities. Environmental Educator Laura Bijnsdorp will give audiences a taste of EPIC’s environmental education program with a presentation on the importance of wetlands. Devon Carter and Giovanni Hughes of the Anguilla National Trust will present on island restoration and its benefits to birds and entire ecosystems, showcasing the recent rat eradication program on Dog Island and plans for Prickly Pear Cays.

Visitors will learn more about local habitats by enjoying the exhibition of selections from the Shadow of a Drought photo essay, highlighting the impact of drought on key St. Martin wetlands. The photo essay is also downloadable as a free ebook from the Les Fruits de Mer website.

Attendees can participate in bird habitat restoration themselves at the Club Gaïac table at Saturday’s event. The Club Gaïac project promotes the planting of Gaïac (also known as Lignum Vitae), an endangered native tree. Guests will learn about the history and ecology of this beautiful heritage tree, and can bring home a free seedling to plant in their backyard or neighborhood.

Another interactive activity at the event will be the Portable Pond Discovery Station, which will give participants a chance to see a whole world of life that lives in St. Martin’s ponds and provides food for our migratory birds, but often goes unnoticed.

Artistically-minded guests of all ages are invited to make “Happy Bird-day” and other bird-themed cards for friends and loved ones at the art activity station.

The 2015 Festival is hosted by Les Fruits de Mer and University of St. Martin, and made possible by the hard work of many volunteers and the generous sponsorship of Aqua Mania Adventures, Calmos Cafe, Delta Petroleum and Hotel L’Esplanade. Visit https://www.lesfruitsdemer.com or find Les Fruits de Mer on Facebook for more information. With covered areas for all the activities, the event will take place rain or shine.