By JON HARRISON/Staff Writer

The Alabama Wildlife center at Oak Mountain State Park in cooperation with the Birmingham Audubon Society, Friends of Oak Mountain State Park and the Oak Mountain Interpretive Center will be holding a series of programs called Audubon Teaches Nature. The program is held one Sunday a month at the Alabama Wildlife Center or the Oak Mountain Interpretive Center.

“The great thing about these programs is that they’re geared toward all ages,” said Scottie Jackson, the Alabama Wildlife Center’s director of education and outreach. “It’s not just for the bird enthusiast or the nature enthusiast, we really want to reach a very broad audience with these programs.”

The program covers a number of subjects from the importance of conserving ecosystems in Alabama such as the Paint Rock River to identifying Alabama’s birds of prey, which includes live barred owls, kestrels, Mississippi kites and a variety of hawks from the Alabama 4-H Center and the Alabama Wildlife Center’s raptor collections.

The next program in the Audubon Teaches Nature series will be Jan. 18, and will be focusing on the Wetumpka Astrobleme, a crescent shaped crater formed by a cosmic object impacting earth millions of years ago, that the city of Wetumpka sits in. A trip to the Wetumpka Astrobleme is a part of this program also.

The admission into the Alabama Wildlife Center is $3, but the Audubon Teaches Nature programs are free of charge.

“The big thing that we want to impress on people is that this is in an all-inclusive program,” said Jackson. “It is a program for everybody whether you are an avid birder or a parent who just wants to get your child excited about nature this program is for you.”

For more information on the Audubon Teaches Nature programs or on the Alabama Wildlife Center visit Awrc.org or call 663-7930.