Love Birds Scavenger Hunt

Feb 8, 2024

Free

🆓

Byline

Brittney Ziegler, Program Coordinator, Covington (Ind.) Public Library

The Love Birds Scavenger Hunt is a fun, passive program designed to engage patrons of all ages and educate them on six different Indiana birds.

Advanced Planning

Our program style is to balance education with entertainment. This scavenger hunt is festive (Valentine's Day), seasonal (highlighting Indiana-wintering birds), educational, and entertaining (who doesn't love a good scavenger hunt?!). It checks all of the boxes.

I started creating the materials in Canva at the beginning of January. We hid six flyers around our library featuring one bird on each flyer. Each flyer also includes a QR code that will take patrons to a brief YouTube video that provides more information on each bird. We pass out bookmarks that have a picture of all six birds, and then we encourage them to spot all six birds in the Library. On the flip side of the bookmark, there is a note that encourages patrons to spot the birds in their own backyard.

Marketing

We began promoting this event at the beginning of February on Facebook. We tagged a local photographer in our post and included some pictures that she took of birds in her own backyard. Partnering with others creates so much visibility for all involved.

We printed bookmarks with pictures of the birds, and we began passing out the bookmarks in February. So far we have had dozens of kids, families and adults roaming throughout the library trying to spot the birds.

Budgeting

The only cost associated with this program was printing the bookmarks and flyers.

Day-of-event Activity

The setup for this passive program is easy. I had staff hide half of the bird flyers throughout the library to get them involved in the preparation. They also helped cut out the bookmarks that we gave away to the patrons.

Program Execution

Counting numbers for passive programming can be difficult, but we are seeing lots of foot traffic in our library during the time of year when we usually have fewer visitors. Lots of people have been spotted roaming with their bird bookmarks trying to find all of the hidden birds.