Brix Does Birdathon

Above: Awesome Brix Cider Biking Bird Brigade image by Beth Raboin, available in sticker form at Brix

Springtime in the Driftless is a bodacious time for birds and in effect, bird watchers. Maybe you haven’t heard the news, but at Brix we’re a crew of bird nerds. Bodacious birds are a sign of thriving ecosystems. Thriving ecosystems build the foundations for resilient communities. We’re all about that stuff around here.

What better way to celebrate birds than to spend a day tracking them down for the sake of raising money for their conservation? On June 1st, the Brix crew will head out for a day of high-stakes bird nerding. Our team, the Brix Cider Biking Bird Brigade, is one of over 55 teams across the state of Wisconsin to participate in this year’s Great Wisconsin Birdathon, a fundraiser for bird conservation organized by the Wisconsin Natural Resources Foundation.

To raise awareness around Wisconsin’s great bird diversity and conservation challenges, the Brix Biking Bird Brigade hopes to identify a whopping total of 75 bird species and raise $1000 towards the Wisconsin Natural Resource Foundation’s Bird Protection Fund.

To find 75 species of birds in a day is no small feat, but the Bird Brigade has a few factors at play in our favor. The Driftless Region hosts a spectacular variety of migrating birds and teams with summertime residents who raise their babies on Wisconsin’s fine fruits of all forms (from insects to apples!). We source our food from farmers and producers who prioritize ecological integrity. On our day of birding, we plan to visit some of these farms to see the impacts of their best practices in action.

We are most certainly making a stop at Dorothy’s Range where our very own cider slinger and farmer, April, rotationally grazes her pigs on a restored prairie that supports enough bird variety to make a birder’s binos tremble.

Bobolinks, here we come!

On top of surveys at farms and orchards, we’re hopping on our bikes to bird the great Military Ridge Bike Trail. Between Madison and Mount Horeb the trail transects what is known in birder’s jargon as primo habitat. This primo habitat is comprised of the Sugar River Watershed. How exciting to have this gem of a place reside literally in our backyard. We encourage all the bikers who visit us from off the trail to tell us their ride’s most exciting bird sightings. Actually… anyone is welcome to tell us of any bird sightings from anywhere anytime…

Which leads back to the other trick up our sleeve that’s going to really bump up our species count numbers—we’re a crew littered with extreme bird nerds. We’re talking professional-level birders between Nina, Kerry, and me, Beth. And we have some eager newbies in Tisha, Rose, and Jules—newbies we are keen to get drinking our bird-lover-for-life Kool-aide (in our case, Cider-aide).

And, if that doesn’t beat all, we will have special guest group leaders, 6-year-old Teddy and 3-year-old Vera, to give us a glimpse of the resident red-tailed hawks at their family’s new home (parents being Brix owners Matt and Marie, FYI) across from Donald County Park. Teddy will be sure to drop some facts about raptors that will in turn drop our jaws.

Long story short, we’re a powerhouse team in a birder’s paradise.

Want to support this fine cause? You can make a donation directly at the Brix Cider Biking Bird Brigade’s official fundraising page. It’s secure and easy, and while you’re there you can learn more about our team, the birdathon, and the Bird Protection Fund. If you are visiting Brix, you can also contribute by purchasing a Brix Biking Bird Brigade Official Member sticker. All proceeds from sales go towards helping us reach our $1000 goal.

OR, you can purchase some of the brand new Brix Small Batch Birdathon Cider (Uh, it’s made with blackberries. Birds and bird nerds can all agree; fermented blackberries are fabulous.). Brix is donating 10% of sales of the Birdathon Blackberry Cider towards the fundraiser, so you can enjoy drinking it for a good cause :)