ITHACA, N.Y. -- Bird enthusiasts and their families are invited to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's community open house June 21 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 159 Sapsucker Woods Road.

The open house is being held to celebrate the lab's new, $26.5 million Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity. The facility is home to almost 200 part- and full-time staff working in the lab's programs on citizen science, education, conservation and bioacoustics research. The building also houses the lab's Macaulay Library, home to the world's largest collection of natural sounds, and the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates, which is valuable to both researchers and educators.

The event will include behind-the-scenes tours, bird walks in the more than four miles of trails winding through the lab's 10-acre Sapsucker Woods sanctuary, door prizes, bird-call contests, bird-feeding workshops, book signings and face painting.

Guests will tour parts of the new building, including the lab's new visitor center, featuring state-of-the-art interactive exhibits, produced with a $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Exhibits include a multimedia theater providing a "virtual experience" in the natural world, a sound studio, a bird-identification kiosk and an object theater showcasing the lab's research and suggesting ways amateur birders can contribute to it.

Free parking and shuttle transportation to the open house will be in the university's "A" lot, with entrances off Pleasant Grove Road and Jessup Road. For parking information, call (607) 254-2473, or log on to http://www.birds.cornell.edu .

Regular lab hours are Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Saturday, 9:30 to 4 p.m.; and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Sapsucker Woods sanctuary trails are open dawn to dusk every day.