PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University is opening a new exhibit Saturday.
Marina McDougall, vice president of experience and engagement at the museum, says the exhibit, Conversations with Birds, is a celebration of people’s passion for birds.
“Birding can be as simple as looking out your window and just enjoying the fleeting comings and goings of a bird,” McDougall said. “So we think that if you just pay a little bit of attention to birds, it will help you pay attention to a lot of other things that are around you and help steward the natural world.”
Featured in the exhibit are birds from the academy’s vast taxidermy collection, the latest bird tracking technologies used in research projects and ways the public can help minimize birds fatally striking Philadelphia buildings during migration.
Anwar Abdul-Qawi, photographer and academy educator, has paid close attention to birds for a few years now.
He says he got into birding a couple of years ago when he noticed dead birds in Center City – a result of them flying into buildings. Those sights totally changed his life.
“Every day on my way to work I would collect anywhere from one to four birds in the same area,” he said.
“I would just pick them up. People would look at me kind of funny because you know it’s kind of weird to pick up dead things off the ground, and I would bring them to our ornithology department and they were always eager and excited to see what new species are flying in migrations.”
After this, he started taking pictures of wild birds in the region, which are now featured in the exhibit. Some of the birds he originally collected are also part of the museum’s taxidermied collections.
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He is grateful his work is on display.
“Honestly, I’m speechless,” Abdul-Qawi said. “I never imagined my work in a museum.”
You can fly by the exhibit for free on select Saturdays until May.