Chickadee by auburnxc
I have a special guest for you today, a guest who is keen to learn about birds. Enjoy!
Dear Mama,
I really want to spend some time with you this weekend learning about birds! I heard about the Great Backyard Bird Count and I am really excited to identify new birds. We only have to spend 15 minutes watching and counting individual species, but we could go to the pond and look for the big red hawk or some ducks. There’s a website where we can look up great information about what kinds of birds live around our house this time of year. I heard there are even some eagles over near the river; maybe we’ll see one of them!
To take part, we need to go bird counting sometime next weekend (February 12th to 15th). After we make our list of species we send it in through the internet. Scientists are collecting all this information to see if there are changes from other years. This is one way scientists keep track of the climate changes. I think that what scientists do is really cool and I’d love to see what it’s like to do their work.
So can we check it out? I‘ve been feeding the birds in our yard for a long time, but I never looked up their names. Now I can and it will help others learn too! Could this be our special Valentines Day adventure?
Love Ya, Your Little Explorer
PS. We could even win some of these prizes for participating! I’d love to win a new birdfeeder!
Shannon Baer started writing at Backyard Mama this past summer in an effort to inspire grandparents, parents, teachers, caregivers and their children to spend more time in nature. Follow @backyardmama for up-to-date tweets about her new adventures. She looks forward to meeting you knee deep in mud and exhausted from a full day of nature play! See you outside!
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Alison Kerr and Marghanita , Shannon Baer. Shannon Baer said: @alisonkerr check out what this adventurer wants to do this weekend- it's for the birds! http://ow.ly/1oiCTK [...]
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by alisonkerr: New post today from a special guest who wants to Learn About Birds http://ow.ly/1oiCTK @backyardmama #playoutdoors #nature #birds…
So nice to see a couple of my favorite bloggers have teamed up! Hope you & your little explorer have much fun with the birds. We’re just beginning to learn about birds ourselves & are really enjoying it.
Debi´s last blog ..El Matador State Beach
We participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count last year and it was lots of fun. Unfortunately, I haven’t filled the feeders once this year, so we aren’t seeing a lot of birds this winter. There are always magpies and sparrows, I suppose.
Mel ´s last blog ..Guest post: Marghanita and Toffee
This will be loads of fun! This last weekend we saw a Great Egret (not in the backyard – heh!) and a Black-billed Magpie. I’m kind of an idiot when it comes to identifying birds, but http://www.whatbird.com has been very useful.
Roy Scribner´s last blog ..4 Ways to Keep Camping Food Cold
Thanks to all these great comments! I am so excited to get out this weekend and count birds. I too am a novice bird identifier- although I have always loved to watch them.
Alison- thanks for the chance to share this with you and your great readers!
The fun thing about being new to bird identification is that there is a lot to learn. I love finding something new to learn!
Shannon, thanks so much for sharing. You are a pleasure to work with.
To identify new birds is a great problem for me. I like birds, I feed them but I don’t know very often their “names”.