What's New - Class & Location

by Chloe Redon

Mickaboo was fortunate to land one of the most desirable spaces in the San Francisco Bay Area as a new, additional location for monthly Basic Bird Care classes and other events: the Pet Food Express (“PFE”) in Walnut Creek. We were told the Walnut Creek store is the first PFE to have the state-of-the-art event room that we will be using. After some investigation and diplomacy, we secured the space from 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm on the fourth Saturday of every month. Another wonderful animal rescue, “Save a Bunny,” will use the space before us, from 10:00 am -1:00 pm.

Pet Food Express offered us not only this beautiful and quiet space, but also lots of support from store management. We already have three RSVPs from future class attendees and the class is still two weeks away.

  

Easy parking is another great benefit. And, unlike the current Berkeley library location for the northern east bay, we can accept donations and bring birds to the Walnut Creek PFE. 

The Walnut Creek location offers easy access for people from the outlying areas of Concord, where Feathered Follies is located, to the east in Oakley, where Dr. Speer practices, and as far north and west as Benicia and Richmond. In the (non-Sacramento) bay area it is a wonderful complement to our other locations in Hayward, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, Marin, and Santa Cruz.

On Saturday, April 24th, Mickaboo will be presenting the new Avian Lighting class, taught by John Graziano, at the Walnut Creek PFE. The class will describe the fascinating and sophisticated avian visual system, which evolved under the sun, and the extent to which that environment differs from the lighting environment in the modern human home. The class will focus on the qualities of sunlight that birds need and explain how to build an indoor lighting system that simulates the qualities of sunlight. Topics include:

•          How and what birds see
•          What birds use light for
•          Why home lighting is inadequate
•          The role of ultraviolet in avian vision
•          Characteristics of the ideal avian light
•          Current options for avian lighting
•          Which bulbs to use and which to avoid

For details, see Mickaboo’s Advanced Bird Classes information at its website. Class size is limited, so if you would like to attend, email class@mickaboo.org and let us know you want to come.