Perhaps this wetland will be where they have their little ducklings.

Do you see the irridescent green head on Mr. Mallard? You can also see where the sun is not reflecting and his head feathers appear black.

Seeing this Mr. and Mrs. Mallard reminded me of the most wonderful book Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, you may be familiar with that one. If not, be sure to check it out!

Northern Flickers are found year-round across pretty much the entire United States. They are fairly large woodpeckers, 12” in size. At first glance you may think they are rather drab in color and pattern, but upon closer observation you’ll notice the bright red sash across the back of their neck, a thick black necklace on their chest, perfect little black polka dots, bars and crescents adorning their front and back, and bright yellow hiding beneath their tail feathers. It is important to note that there are variations to these colors and patterns depending on their location in the U.S.

You can visit the above link for more information on the Flicker or also I did a blog post previously about the first time we observed one of these interesting birds HERE.

In the meantime here is a website where you can get more information:

National Bird Day

My son came blasting into the house yelling, at first making me think we were on the way to the hospital again:), but thank the Lord it was just an excited yell because he could hear them coming. So we all jumped up and ran out onto the sidewalk to see several large V formations of the beautiful birds flying overhead. The sound they were giving off was amazing! If you visit THIS website you can hear their call, just multiply it by about 50!

According to what I read, this is the time of year to see the Sandhill Cranes migrating. They are mostly  located in the Northwestern areas of the United States and Canada during the summer months, and in California, Southern Florida, Texas and Mexico during the winter months. We would only see them here in Kentucky when they are migrating, so it was quite a treat!

If you visit the above linked website you can also read up on some other interesting information about Sandhill Cranes such as they choose a mate for life and migrate with their offspring!

We’ve checked out a couple of books from our library to learn more, including the following:

Luck by Jean Craighead George

I love everything that I’ve read of Ms. George’s, so I’m sure this is a lovely book.

This morning as the beautiful rose and lavendar colored rays of the sun crept up over the horizon, I sat outside for awhile and heard the beautiful “dawn chorus” of the birds. The temperature will climb to a sweltering 73 degrees today and skies will be mostly sunny…now that’s a good reason to sing don’t you think?

It’s about midday now, and the warm wind is whistling happily through our wide open windows. The fresh air is like energy for the soul. We just got back inside from taking a beautiful nature walk. I will post about that later. Enjoy this beautiful day.

 Attention Eastern Bluebirds!!  We now have prime real estate available!

 Lately we’ve seen a few Eastern Bluebird sightings. For a couple of years now I’ve been wanting to hang up an Eastern Bluebird house in efforts to invite them to live in my backyard.  My Dad is the resident Bluebird house maker so he made and hung one up for us this week.  Thank you Dad!!

 We spent some time one day sitting outside listening to birds singing and chattering.  We kept a notebook page handy and wrote down all the one’s we could hear by making a list of the type of bird (if we knew it) and what we thought it sounded like.  Such as we heard three bird sounds and listed:

 Northern Cardinal - sounds like cheery, cheery, cheery

White-Breasted Nuthatch - sounds like beep, beep, beep

Northern Flicker - sounds like “ric, ric, ric, ric, ric, riccccc”

 We also were able to observe all of these birds in action, and made verbal note of where they were when they were singing.  Of course I think we could have heard a lot more if my son wasn’t pretending to fly around the backyard chirping like a bird, I think that scared off a few!  (real homeschool mom quote:  “Alex, stop running around the backyard in your pajamas chirping like a bird, the neighbors will think we’re crazy!”)  He did manage to calm down for a moment, standing perfectly still by the bird feeders while a few came very close to him.

 After returning back inside, we revisited this quote by Jenny Wren from The Burgess Bird Book for Children:

“I do wish he would be careful.  Sometimes I am afraid he will overdo.  Just look at him now!  He is singing so hard that he is shaking all over…” pg. 3

 Next we read Solomon 2:11-12:

 ”See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.”

 We had a quick discussion on how beautiful the singing of birds is in the spring.  And then we talked a bit about why the birds sing.  Birds sing primarily for three main reasons:

 - to communicate with one another

- to define territory

- to attract a mate

 Mostly it is the males that do the singing, however sometimes the female will sing too.  Such as with the Northern Cardinal the female will sometimes sing with the male as if to strengthen their bond.

 Not all birds technically sing, some make many other interesting sounds.  Such as:  pheasants crow, doves coo, kingfishers rattle, owls hoot, hawks screech, and woodpeckers drum.

Bird’s bills and beaks play little or no role in singing.  The sound comes from deep in their throat.  It is made by exhaling air from their lungs.  While the bird’s beak may not play a role in their singing, some birds are quite showing in using their beaks while serenading.  Such as the Eastern Medowlark.

Experts think birds learn to sing as a result of a combination of heredity and mimicking.  Juvenille songbirds will begin to rehearse their songs by their first autumn and winter.  And by spring they are singing maturely.

Most birds do not sing all year long.  The Northern Cardinal is the exception, having been known to sing all year long.  During the winter time the Cardinal’s singing is almost always one of the first sounds we hear when we go out for nature walks.  The best time to hear the widest variety of birds singing is at dawn on a spring morning, it has been referred to as the “Dawn Chorus.”  This is of course because the springtime is the peak of mating season.

Most songbirds sing short songs of about 2-6 seconds; a few are known to continuously repeat.  Bird songs are categorized mainly in two ways:  songs - melodious; and calls – sharp/direct.  Calls are used as loud alarms or quiet chatter to attract a female.

Another thing we discussed is the fact that bird songs have been the source of inspiration for a lot of classical music.  There is an interesting study about this where they list the composer and the composition in which they wrote that mimics some bird songs.  You can find that here:   How Tweet It Is: Bird Songs in Classical Music.  We listened to several of these compositions by linking from that site to here:  Classical Music for the Birds.

Did you know that there is a debate about Beethoven’s 5th symphony?  Some say he based the beginning of the symphony (da da da daaaaa) from the sound that the Yellow Hammer (aka Northern Flicker) makes when drumming on a tree.  Others say it was intended to be the sound of “fate knocking at the door.”  What do you think?

One last neat note.  We learned about a bird called the Lyre Bird.  They live in Southern Australia.  Well, I’ll just let the video do the rest of the talking!

For the past two days we’ve been spending some quality time observing the birds at our feeders.  Why you ask?  Well, other than the obvious reason that we really enjoy watching the birds…we’ve used our observations for Math and Geography of course!!  I’ve made up three spreadsheets to help with this (you can click on the images below to download the files if you’re interested):

         

 The first one is a Bird Feeder Observation Graph, the second a Bird Feeder Observation Graph with Color Legend, and the third a Bird Feeder Observation Tally Sheet.

What we did first was put our tally sheets onto a clipboard and sat for about 30 or 45 minutes observing the feeders and writing down all the different bird types that we saw onto our lists, along with the highest number observed at one time of each bird.  For example, say we saw three (3) American Goldfinches at one time; we immediately wrote the name and three tallies on our sheet.  If five minutes later we saw some American Goldfinches again, only this time there was five (5) all at once, we added two more tallies to our sheet by their name.  This is the only “best guess” way to determine how many you had at the feeder that day without duplication.

After finishing our tally, we then transferred the data onto the graph sheets.  There are two graph sheets to choose from, whether you want to put the type of bird on the graph, or put the type of bird in a color legend below it.

Also on the graph is a place to mark the observer’s name, date, time of observation, weather, and temperature.  We plan on doing this several times over the next couple of weeks and then comparing our data to see if there are any patterns in the types and numbers of birds and the weather.

For Geography, they each chose a bird that we had seen at the feeders that morning and read a bit about it and then mapped it’s range on a blank map of the United States.

 These two maps were for the Carolina Wren and Northern Cardinal.  Both of these birds’ ranges were “year-round”; however if they hadn’t been we would have marked the varying seasons with different colors.  We also plan on doing this at least a few times over the span of our studies.

Now if we can just figure out what type of “bird” this is?!!   LOL

We started by reading Psalm 84:3-4 (my blog verse) which says:

“Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young – a place near your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King and my God.  Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.”

After having a quick discussion about this verse we went over the following interesting facts about birds:

There are around 10,000 species of birds known in the world.

You can find birds in every climate, from the poles to the tropics.

By some estimates there are around 100 billion birds in the world, roughly 20 billion of them in North America alone.

The world’s most abundant birds are oceanic.

Next we began reading Chapter 1 in the The Burgess Bird Book for Children, oh, that was so delightful!!  Because the author’s writing is so VERY delightful and entertaining this was a true treat today.  If you are not familiar with this book, I highly recommend it!  Mr. Burgess takes birds and brings them to life, personifying them into lovable characters which teach lessons about the real-life birds.  The first chapter was about Jenny Wren (House Wren).  From reading this fun story we learned the following things about Wrens:  they are quite bold and brave, they are brown to be camouflaged, they migrate in the winter because of lack of appropriate food, they often return to the same nest they previously nested in, they nest in cavities, and they sing and work with much energy.  There are some who say this book is geared towards younger children, but my older kids and I too loved it!

After reading the story, we listened to the sound of a House Wren, and we all about fell out of our chairs laughing!  Because we knew right away what Jenny Wren was talking about when she was worrying about Mr. Wren because he would sing so hard she thought she would hurt himself!  Give it a listen and see yourself!

After that both of the kids completed nature notebooking pages, Hannah did one for the House Wren, and because my son always does the opposite of what you want him to do, he did one on the Pileated Woodpecker.  I learned not to fight certain battles, he’s still learning right?!  Besides I think he did a great job on the drawing, and then he wrote up a whole page describing the Pileated….I’ll take it.

Next, we grabbed up our clipboard with a file I had typed up for a Signs of Birds Nature Hunt and headed outside.   You can download this file which I put in Adobe by clicking the link.  We had so much fun on our walk!  It was still quite cold though because it was still pretty early, and the top layer of snow on the ground had melted a bit and then refroze into an ice rink overnight.  So we didn’t stay out too long, but we managed to find several items on our hunt.  We also found animal tracks all over the place!  Such as these turkey tracks and squirrel tracks.

Which we knew the turkey tracks came from the herd of them that was at the feeders this morning!

But, I must admit that the kids were quite distracted by the ice rink yard which made a great surface for sledding on your belly.

It wasn’t long before Gabby was jumping on their backs for a ride down.

That was it for the beginning of our bird studies.  Tomorrow we have plans to do a few more things including some bird feeder watching.  I have lots of neat things planned, so stay tuned!  And soon I’ll have a Bird Book Basket put up on my side bar.  I will be taking a very short blog break of just a few days, I have a toddler needing extra attention right now.

In the meantime don’t forget to check out the Nuts About Nature Giveaway below and don’t forget about the The Great Backyard Bird Count coming up soon!