By Sherry Stanek
Urban Forestry Commission

City of Whitewater is Awarded High Flyer Bird City Status For 2025

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission [UFC] wants to share with residents that our city has once again been awarded High Flyer Bird City Status! This is a high honor for our city. Each year, UFC holds various educational opportunities for city residents to educate us all on the importance of birds, their roles in the environment and each of our roles in protecting them and helping them to thrive! They are so much more than beautiful!

Be sure to stop by one of the Purple Martin communities at Minieska Park, Clay Street Nature Park or Starin Park and watch these delightful birds swoop and eat insects as they rear their young. And please join us at Whitewater Middle School this fall to watch the Chimney Swifts gang up to migrate south. Help us count the literally hundreds of these birds as they gather at this very important nesting site! Thank you to WMS! Take part in Backyard Bird Counts as citizen scientists and get to know this important part of our world.

The following communication was received from the Bird City Wisconsin program director.

Dear City of Whitewater,
On behalf of myself and Bird City Wisconsin’s Steering Committee, I would like to congratulate the City of Whitewater on achieving High Flyer status in the Bird City Wisconsin program. Bird City communities are at the forefront of efforts to forge a statewide coalition of citizens and public officials who recognize that birds are more than beautiful – they are significant. Bird City
Wisconsin truly appreciates both all that you do to green your community as well as all of the effort that you put into demonstrating all of your community’s actions to us during the renewal process. ~ Kelsey Bell, Program Director

About Bird City
Bird City Wisconsin was created in 2009 and began recognizing communities the following year. The program recognizes municipalities for the conservation and education activities that they undertake to make their communities healthy for birds… and people. Bird City Wisconsin is the first Bird City program and served as the model for the Western Hemisphere-wide Bird City
Network, of which Bird City Wisconsin is a founding member. To be recognized as a Bird City, a community must take actions across four categories (Habitat, Threat Reduction, Education & Engagement, and Sustainability) and officially recognize and celebrate World Migratory Bird Day. Bird City also offers High Flyer recognition for those communities that truly go above and
beyond in their conservation and education programs. To become a High Flyer, a community must meet additional, and more involved, criteria.