Week 3 Nature Study: BIRDS

An injured Red tail hawk. On display while healing.

My apologies for lacking the past few weeks. We have completed all of our Autumn nature studies except for our pumpkin studies. For week 2:Trees. The boys went out with grandpa for a hike and discovered many oak trees and talked about acorns. Also, what the purpose of acorns are. They completed the note-booking pages with all of the information. I will post the pictures of their note booking pages soon.

I have to say that the bird and squirrel study was the best study this season. We tried to find birds that we are not use to seeing everyday, like cardinals and robins.
We are lucky to have a state park that has an amazing ornithology center. We were able to use interactive computers, view taxidermy birds in a habitat and watch live birds in their natural habitat through a huge viewing window.



M6 choose the hairy woodpecker. We did get to see this bird on the feeders, but could not get a picture so we had to look at it more in the research books. They had an interactive section on the computer for this bird as well. So, we got to hear its 'song'(Which is compared to that of a toucan) and its migration pattern.



L9 Chose a killdeer. (Because he liked his name) It was not around to view this season so hopefully we can actually view it in spring. However, there was a taxidermy version to view as well as the interactive section on the computer. We realized that the 'song' of this bird is one that we hear often on walks and such, but don't ever see. Here is a website to hear the killdeer song:
http://www.birdjam.com/birdsong.php?id=18

They each filled out a note booking page for their bird of choice.



K3 was all over the place with excitement. He enjoyed walking around with binoculars around his neck pretending to be an explorer. KJ2 Enjoyed listening to the sounds on the interactive programs. He especially enjoyed all the crazy duck sounds.

We focused a lot more on the birds than the squirrels. They boys got a kick out of the fact that the squirrels in this park are ...well....kind of obese. They looked like huge cuddly mini-cats :) They named the fattest one..chunky butt. Hey, they are boys.

I mentioned in the original post describing this nature study that you could make this a a more in depth study. You could focus a week on the new bird, its sound, and habitat. Then the 2ND week on a birds structural and internal structures, feathers, and purpose of wings.

What birds do you choose for this study? Are they local to only your state or to the U.S.?