 My name is John McKenzie. I'm a lead park ranger with the City of Columbia and welcome to Destination Hometown. Our spring bird walk is coming up on March 17th, Saturday at 1 o'clock right here at beautiful riverfront park. We're at the north end and this is where we'll meet on Saturday. Right at the canal head gates is where we'll start and we'll enjoy a walk down by the river and along the canal to see the different types of birds that we can find in both bodies of water. When we start a bird walk here at the north end it's great because we have the Diversion Dam, we have the Broad River and we have the Columbia Canal and the forest that's in between. So we have a lot of habitat for a lot of different types of birds. First of all on any of our nature walks we take care to look for anything and everything that's out there to see. So we always encourage people to bring field guides and binoculars. It's also a good idea to bring hats and sunglasses and good sturdy footwear. Well what's great about a spring bird walk is that we're going to start looking for birds that are migrating through or coming here for the rest of the year. There's always a lot of good waterfowl and water birds around at the park throughout the year. But spring's fun because we start to get extra species. This is a good opportunity for people that don't know anything about birds or want to come help me because they know a lot about birds and be an extra set of eyes out here. But you don't have to know much. We love teaching people and getting them more familiar with what's out here. A lot of people have never even been to this part of the city or the park and so it's a great introduction to our beautiful park here too. Riverfront Park is great for birds and to learn about birding because of the nesting bald eagles nearby. We have nesting great blue herons right near the dam and you'll learn a lot about the birds here and then you'll be able to take that home to your neighborhood in your yard and learn about the birds that you're seeing right around your feeders and in your own yard. Yeah, you don't need to sign up, you just need to show up. Again, that's at one o'clock on Saturday, March 17th, so coming up soon.