Angel
Nests
Why Make An Angel Nest?
Since the 1970's the annual bird population has been reduced by almost 3 billion birds. That would be like the population of China and India disappearing. Learn more in the video below.
You can learn more at the American Bird Conservancy.
Why are birds important to the earth?
Birds Keep Our Ecosystems Running Smoothly
Birds eat 400–500 tons of insects per year. Birds like crows and vultures scavenge carcasses, reducing the spread of diseases such as rabies and distemper. Birds disperse seeds, spreading plants into new areas. Birds such as hummingbirds help pollinate plants.
Hover over each image below to learn about some of the main reasons for bird decline.
Habitat Loss
Loss of habitat is the biggest reason for the massive decline in bird population.
You can help by making your habitat more bird friendly, including putting up multiple Angel nests and providing food and fresh water for the birds.
Cats
Now numbering well over 100 million in the United States, cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year in the U.S. alone, making cat predation by far the largest source of direct, human-caused mortality to birds.
You can help by keeping your cat indoors and making sure your cats are neutered in case they get outside.
Pesticides
Rat poisons kill raptors like Swainson's Hawk, owls, and eagles, while weed-killers and insecticides can be lethal to songbirds, from Ruby-throated Hummingbird to Golden-winged Warbler.
You can help by using natural pesticides and educating yourself on the impact common pesticides have on the environment.
Team Awesomesauce
Awesomesauce was formed as an Odyssey of the Mind (OOTM) team in 2015. Of the 7 original team members, 2 have been with the team since then with 2 others having been with the team for 4 years or more and the remaining with 2 years. The team has participated in OOTM every year, including during the COVID years, and has made it to the World Championship every year since 2017.
In 2019, Awesomesauce won the coveted Ranatra Fusca award at the World Championship. You can see our performance here.
2024 marks the last year for Team Awesomesauce as every member is a high school senior. However, several teammates plan to participate in OOTM as coaches, judges and volunteers while in college and beyond.
About This Odyssey Angels Project
As High School Seniors, we knew it would be our last year doing odyssey together and we wanted to honor our nine years as a team by giving back and doing an Odyssey Angels project.
We wanted to do something to help out the environment and researching we read about the decline in bird population, particularly in suburban areas like where we are located. From there, we brainstormed ideas and came up with the idea for nesting materials.
During the early fall, we went around and gathered nesting materials from local landscaping about to be cut down and contacted a few of the local llama farms about gathering their fall cuttings. We also reached out to other businesses to get leftovers for the nests - such as a local halloween attraction that had plenty of left over hay bales and a company which uses coconut husks for gardening (although we ended up purchasing the coconut string as what they had was not as strong.)
We also worked with our local community college. Some of our teammates take classes there and are running an event club on campus. Our team worked with the college through the club they ran to pitch a workshop for the assembly and distribution of the Angel nests. We partnered with the art club on campus who brought more volunteers and offered to create some art for the birds on our website.
We spent 2 weeks cutting, sorting and bagging the components needed. During the event at the college, we had over 40 college students and they made over 120 “Angel Nests”. We explained how we made our example ones, but encouraged everyone to be creative with how they did it!
While everyone was making their different types of Angel Nests, our team members explained how these were important for the birds by not only supplying them with easier materials for better nest building to grow the locally dwindling bird population, but also because it prevents birds from using toxic materials in their nests which can harm baby birds.
We asked them to take pictures of the nest and post it to our instagram page (@angelnestsva)
We have posted some of the pictures below as well!
