A special play about seabirds and the nature of Karpathos Island

The weekly communication through skype with the Fourth Grade pupils of the 2^nd Primary School of Pigadia in Karpathos, within the Seabird LIFE Project, resulted in children’s love of rare birds and animals of Karpathos, especially of its seabirds, and in the creation of a play about them.

The teacher Kalliopi Ioannidou and her pupils, created an admirable play (the script was written in rhymes by the children), which could stand as a play on an actual stage. The (endemic) bluebell of Karpathos, ringed Audouin’s Gulls and Mediterranean Shags, chicks of Yelkouan Seawater and Cory’s Seawater, Yellow-legged Gulls, the Salamander of Karpathos, Eleonora’s Falcons (tagged with satellite transmitters!), the Karpathos Frog, the Mediterranean Monk Seal, the Loggerhead Sea Turtle, the Bonelli’s Eagle, the Long-legged Buzzard and Chukar Partridge: they all appeared on stage proving that the treasure of Karpathos Island is its nature and its children!

May Iintroduce myself I am theAudouin’s Gull Full of pride Flying high To the Aegean sky. A Mediterraneanspecies And from all the gulls the rarest of them all. What if we are not many left What if we can’t find food We are all together Sworn guardians of the Aegean! My leg is ringed by the Hellenic Ornithological Society and the ring is engraved with numbers. When they spot me on the islands they observe me in binoculars from afar they see where I come from if I feed well if I mate or if I am fighting with a Yellow-legged Gull! And when the times comes to migrate which route I follow and where I fly to. (Part of the play)