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Ruth
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| Posted: May 26 2007 at 4:07pm | IP Logged
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I recently bought some great bird seed and put them on our birdfeeders, and we are getting the most beautiful birds on our deck.
I'd like to encourage our kids to become avid bird watchers, maybe do a lapbook, or a unit study, but I don't have any resources, except a new field guide I bought and the Apologia Zoologly. We do have 3 Hummingbird feeders, which get a lot of traffic. I just can't photograph them in time. 
Can anyone recommend some books I could get at the library (I live in a VERY small town with a tiny library and not many resources)  , or ideas for a lapbook, or anything else you think might encourage the kids to learn about birds?
Here is a link to a very small post I just did with some cute pictures about bird watching:
Bird Watching
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Ruth
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joann10
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My kids love watching the birds. I have added a slide show to my blog that includes our birds, flowers, and now we have a few bugs. It is the nature notebook. They like identifying the birds, we use thePeterson's Field Guide/Eastern Birds
We have also found pictures on the internet and printed out what we have seen and kept that as a list of "our birds."
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mary
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stan tekiela makes a bird book for every state (i think!) we have loved ours so much that we needed a second copy. my other suggestion is to give your children free access to a digital camera. finally, if you have a nature center nearby, weekly trips would be fun. ours has a pileated woodpecker nest on one of the trails and we have been trying to find it. maybe next week. . .
good luck!
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hylabrook1
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We find the National Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Birds very useful. I think I bought it at Costco for around $12, so it's not an overly-huge investment.
Peace,
Nancy
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guitarnan
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What about a bulletin board of bird coloring pages, cut out? We did this 2 years ago. We were members of Enchanted Learning then, and we found some other websites, such as 50birds.com, which has a bird coloring book. My daughter colored birds I'd never heard of, and then cut them out and made a lovely board.
Enchanted Learning has a membership fee, but there are definitely other resources out there. Even small libraries usually have a Peterson's Field Guide, too.
This will be a very rewarding study for your family, I can assure you! We all love birding...did the Backyard Bird Count last January...and this from a mom who grew up thinking all birds were doves, owls, pigeons, seagulls, robins, birds you found in books (the cool eagles and cardinals) and, well...birds. Now I can usually tell them by flight path, wing shape, etc. It's wonderful!
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Kristie 4
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One resource that we have loved here are the Audobon and Peterson field guide coloring books. The Bird one has ouline sketches of birds that are just like the ones you would find in field guides, and also a key for coloring each bird. On top of that, there is a short paragraph for each species contained.
One year, when we did a casual unit on birds, the kids would pick a bird to color and I would play bird calls in the background for them.
The pictures in the coloring books are also great to use as references for when we are drawing/painting our own sketches.
Have fun birding!!
Kristie
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jugglingpaynes
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Our family has used eBird for the past 6 years. It's put together by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, who do the Great Backyard Bird Counts. Birders report observations using checklists on the site and this data is used to help track the presence or absence of species, as well as bird abundance. This makes watching more interesting for the kids because they become part of a real, ongoing scientific study, and you have access to all the data that is collected. It has many resources to help new birders identify species. And it's free.
Since we started, my kids and I have become pretty good at identifying species. We have an Audubon field guide we use when we identify a bird we've never seen before. Even my 5 year old can identify about 5-10 species. A friend of ours is an ornithologist/raptor specialist who taught us how to look at identifying marks on birds to find them in the guides. Practice makes perfect! If you spend a few minutes a day watching them, you get pretty good at identification.
eBird
Have fun!
Cristina
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JennGM
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What fun, Ruth! I know so little about birding myself, so it's education for me and my son.
On Sunday we went to Shaver's Creek Raptor Center which was so great to be able to see these raptors close up and personal (see Molly, there are great things to see in State College!).
I talked with the PSU student in the bookshop for some help. He had a few books for children on birding, I can't remember the one name. I would recommend writing an email for book recommendations.
The one book I bought Sibley's Birding Basics is great for a beginner mom like me. "How to identify birds, using the clues in feathers, habitats, behaviors and sounds." Great color illustrations. He also agreed that Peterson's Field Guide is one of the best for our level.
Project Feeder Watch seems like such a great program to get the kids involved, also.
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Ruth
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| Posted: May 29 2007 at 3:49pm | IP Logged
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Wow!!! I'm amazed at all the resources out there. Thank you all so much. I just made a wish list at Amazon  I do hope to get some of these books. My absolutely favorite bird right now is the Red-bellied Woodpecker, but he's so shy I'm shocked at how many species of birds we are getting on our deck. It is so much fun!!!
Thank you so much!
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KellyJ
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Ruth, for the most basic identification of very common birds, you might check your library for some Jim Arnosky books. The Peterson's guide is really handy, and there are just so many good resources out there -- online and on the shelves. We even use some Peterson CDs for identifying birds by their songs and calls.
You mentioned woodpeckers, and my grandfather just mentioned to me yesterday that he is reading a book called Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Headaches? (hope I got the name right). He said it is a really good book with facts about birds. I placed a library hold on it and saw it was just published this year.
I think one of the best ways to get your children into birding is for them to be around people who are passionate about birds. Whether that means an elderly family member or neighbor or you (even if that means you actively develop interest in birding). I've found birding to be contagious. Once one child catches it, the others hitch right along, spying for birds and trying to ID them.
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Ruth
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KellyJ wrote:
I think one of the best ways to get your children into birding is for them to be around people who are passionate about birds. Whether that means an elderly family member or neighbor or you (even if that means you actively develop interest in birding). I've found birding to be contagious. Once one child catches it, the others hitch right along, spying for birds and trying to ID them. |
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This is so true. Even our 4 year old can identify at least 5 species right now. They love the chickadees. The kids sit by the window all day waiting for them to come by. It really is contagious!!!
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KellyJ
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Ruth wrote:
| They love the chickadees. The kids sit by the window all day waiting for them to come by. It really is contagious!!! |
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The chickadees are something. Our 2 yo even knows the chickadee's call. He's always telling us when he sees a bird while we're driving and tries to ID it. So cute!
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Cici
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Wanted to chime in here with the Arnosky book. "Crinkleroot's Guide to knowing the Birds". I learned a lot from reading it and it continues to be a favorite around here - about 1 year now. If you really really want to get nutty about chickadees - you have to read the book. Crinkleroot notes that the chickadee isn't shy at all, and if you sit still and not look them in the eye you can get them to eat out of your hand.
So, from time to time I have a 5 year old (4 at the time) and 2 1/2 year old trying to attrat chickadees out of their hand (as if they could EVER sit that still )
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jugglingpaynes
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Cici wrote:
If you really really want to get nutty about chickadees - you have to read the book. Crinkleroot notes that the chickadee isn't shy at all, and if you sit still and not look them in the eye you can get them to eat out of your hand.
So, from time to time I have a 5 year old (4 at the time) and 2 1/2 year old trying to attrat chickadees out of their hand (as if they could EVER sit that still ) |
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We've hand fed our chickadees. It does take a bit of patience, but I managed to help our youngest do it when she was 4 by holding her hand steady. Chickadees don't mind as long as you don't look directly at them. She got such a kick out of it! My oldest and I are veteran chickadee hand feeders. I've read that hummingbirds can also be trained to sit on a hand while sipping nectar, but we only get one hummingbird each year so I haven't had a chance to test it (I'm not organized enough to remember to change nectar feeders if no one uses them.)
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lapazfarm
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The bird feeder has really paid off around here, too. It's true that the excitement is contageous. My 1.5 yo grandson's first word, other than "mama" and "dada" was "bird". Clear as a bell and excitedly pointing at the feeder! 
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