{"id":62527,"date":"2018-08-20T05:23:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-20T11:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=62527"},"modified":"2018-08-20T12:18:44","modified_gmt":"2018-08-20T18:18:44","slug":"the-new-eccles-wildlife-education-center-at-farmington-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/20\/the-new-eccles-wildlife-education-center-at-farmington-bay\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Eccles Wildlife Education Center At Farmington Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"

And my contribution to it.<\/p>\n

Many of us have been anxiously awaiting the opening of the new Eccles Wildlife Education Center at Farmington Bay. The planning and construction process has taken more years than I care to\u00a0think about\u00a0and in the interim, between the closing of the\u00a0old inadequate center and the opening of this\u00a0spectacular\u00a0new one, countless valuable teaching\u00a0and wildlife viewing opportunities have been lost forever\u00a0to young students and to the general public. But all that is about to be behind us because in the next couple of weeks there will be two Grand Openings (one for dignitaries and one for the public) and then the center and its trails will open to the public on September 5, 2018. I’m very excited.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning the center’s new Coordinator Billy Fenimore gave me the grand tour. Billy generously spent 90 minutes with me as\u00a0we toured this wonderful new facility and\u00a0talked about his vision for the center and those who use it. I was\u00a0highly impressed by everything I saw and heard. As a biology teacher in the public schools, as a bird photographer teaching photography classes\u00a0and when I\u00a0taught\u00a0at the Utah Museum of Natural History I’ve used a variety of similar facilities in the past\u00a0and I believe this new center has been very well designed to fulfill its purpose (they definitely aren’t always). Its\u00a0design fits\u00a0well into the natural setting and\u00a0I think it’s beautiful to boot.<\/p>\n

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One dilemma I had was probably a selfish one. I had several cameras with me in case it seemed appropriate to take photos for this blog post that I was considering doing but in the end I left them in my pickup without even telling Billy about my original\u00a0intention. I decided that I shouldn’t steal any thunder from the Grand Openings coming up very soon by taking photos of the center and making them public before the opening.<\/p>\n

In some ways the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance of the new center is its auditorium. It’s\u00a0grand, it’s\u00a0functional and\u00a0flexible\u00a0in design and it’s quite large. And it’s lined on most of its walls by many very large and\u00a0beautiful\u00a0prints\u00a0of local birds taken by several photographers including my friends Joe Ford, John Blumenkamp and\u00a0yours truly. The prints have been\u00a0strategically and artistically placed and partly because of their quality and their very large size they make quite an impression as you enter the auditorium.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I said I didn’t take photos of anything while I was there and that included in the auditorium but at the risk of tooting my own horn I thought some readers might be interested in seeing which of my\u00a0images were chosen to hang on the auditorium walls. There are eight of them and I must say they look very good, as do Joe’s and John’s.<\/p>\n

I’ve included my eight photos below. Regular readers will\u00a0have seen many of them before.<\/p>\n

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Rufous Hummingbird<\/em><\/p>\n

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Tundra Swans<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"burrowing<\/p>\n

Juvenile Burrowing Owls<\/em><\/p>\n

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Belted Kingfisher<\/em><\/p>\n

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Yellow-headed Blackbird<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Cinnamon<\/p>\n

Cinnamon Teal (actually it’s an unusual\u00a0Cinnamon Teal\/Green-winged Teal hybrid\u00a0but the Cinnamon Teal characteristics dominate)<\/em><\/p>\n

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Lazuli Bunting<\/em><\/p>\n

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Black-billed Magpie<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagine what these prints (and Joe’s and John’s)\u00a0look like in such a grand and appropriate setting and at such large sizes. I’m very happy with how they turned out.<\/p>\n

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Ok, enough about my photos.<\/p>\n

Farmington Bay WMA and eventually the original Nature Center were almost my second home for years so I feel deeply invested in both of them. For me many things that happen out there are personal, warranted or not. Justina Bernstein was the first Director of the Nature Center and she was perfect for that\u00a0very challenging position. To do it well you need to enjoy working with the public and be highly skilled at it, be knowledgeable about local birds and wildlife, have contagious enthusiasm for what you do and enjoy getting “down and dirty” rather than holing up in an office somewhere on the premises.<\/p>\n

And in my opinion someone in state government did their homework (they don’t always)\u00a0when they offered\u00a0Billy the position. He fits that bill perfectly. I have every confidence that Billy will\u00a0perform brilliantly and the new Eccles Wildlife\u00a0Education Center will be a huge success.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n