Meep, meep!  Fee-bee, fee-bee!  Hoo- hoo, hoo-hoo!

Do you know which of these is an OWL?  a NUTHATCH?  a CHICKADEE?

We have been learning to identify many of the birds in our local area… especially the birds that come to our tree and window BirdFeeders!  Our Ornithologist of the week writes down the birds we see. We have seen chickadees (black-capped and chestnut backed), juncos, song sparrows, house finches, house sparrows, Stellar’s Jays (that’s our BC bird!), Towhees, white-crowned sparrows, bushtits, crows, starlings, varied thrush, as well as Downy woodpeckers, flickers, and even big Pileated Woodpeckers!  (Oops… no owls, though!) We usually see Rufous hummingbird, although they haven’t come to our window yet this year.  One year, Mrs. B. even had a mallard duck pair bring their BABIES to nibble on fallen seeds!

http://www.teacherwebshelf.com/boekhout/localbirds.htm

On the May long weekend we collect bird data over two days and then submit our results to SEEDS Canada http://seedsfoundation.ca/.  Students all over Canada count up the birds they see!  As well as learning about our local environment, we get to use our MATH skills for all the data we collect!  I wonder what bird will be the most commonly seen this year?  (Hint: It’s usually a CROW!!!)

This year we had a very special “bird activity”, thanks to one of our students and his Mom!  They brought in Owl Pellets!  Owls eat their prey whole, and after about 12 to 18 hours, they “cough up” a fur ball of all the parts they can’t digest!  You might say, “Yuck, disgusting!” but we decided to act like scientists and say, “Verrrry interesting!”  We couldn’t believe all the little bones we found!  We found skulls and leg bones from little rodents, and were able to identify some of the bones on charts just made for owl pellets!  Science is SO much fun!

 

 Our favourite bird website is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology because we can look up birds, see a map of where they live, hear their bird songs (or squawks!), and sometimes even watch short video clips!

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/browse.aspx