The Great Backyard Bird Count

This weekend we had a lot of family fun learning about our feathered friends and participating in The Great Backyard Bird Count.  Actually we got things started before the weekend so we would know what we were looking for or looking at once we found one.

I choose 7 birds that are typical in our area and posted their pictures in the playroom and in the dining room.  We talked about their names and what key features they have for easy spotting.  Neal helped to put each bird's song on my phone so we could listen to it and figure out which bird made the sound.  After meals we would listen to a few and then they would get to point to which one they thought it was.

I also randomly played a bird watchers DVD from the local library.  Instead of Elmo and Berenstain Bears we got to enjoy the sights and sounds of a variety of birds, several of which we were targeting to learn.

Then we cleaned out the bird feeder and filled it with fresh bird seed to see if we could get frequent visitors to identify.  Our first guest was a northern cardinal.

Once we felt familiar with most of the birds and their calls/songs, we planned a Saturday trip to a local green area where we tallied our observations of the birds.  We had off and on light showers the whole day.  We started out on a paved path and counted 4 birds; two of which we had studied--a northern cardinal and American robin.  Because of the rain we had there were very few out and about so we decided to leave the paved walk and explore next to a creek. 

That was a bad idea.  We spent 5 minutes tallying birds, 5 minutes making our way down to the creek and back up where we saw no birds of any kind, and then spent 20 minutes scraping mud off our shoes!  We tried to walk it off on the paved path, we rubbed our shoes in grass, on gravel, on the sides of curbs once back in the parking lot, and tried rinsing the treads in puddles.  By this time the rain was really starting to come down. 

We laughed at ourselves and piled in the car.  Once home we looked out our window to view birds coming to our feeder and read children bird watching books instead. 

We are going to give the outdoors another try on Monday if the weather is better.  When we finish tallying (Monday being the last day to do so) we will enter our information on the Great Backyard Bird Count website.