Busy Baker Birders
(Don’t you just love our name. It came to me when trying to title this piece and we all agreed it was perfect.) Thank you Mark Haberle for extending our bird sanctuary yesterday. River, Wes, and Grace helped Mark when he came to attach the extension. They then hung the feeders from it. We had our first woodpecker soon after, more chickadees, and maybe a bluebird. We are thrilled with the bird activity at the sanctuary. Then when we thought it couldn’t get any better, the preschoolers came with a birdfeeder they made for our sanctuary. It was exciting. I showed the preschoolers our wall of good deeds and told them to look for their picture the next time they came. (Mark, keep an eye out for your picture on the wall of good deeds too.)
Today is the national Christmas Bird Count! We were outside from 8:15-9 counting birds in three different places. Yesterday, the students and I walked outside to discuss our work and the importance for taking it seriously. We also talked about dressing warmly, as if we were preparing to go skiing. (I am still hoping some of you will be able to bring boughs for our bird sanctuary.) We used Joe’s walkie-talkies to communicate between groups. Our group names were Shrike, Chickadee, and Woodpecker. I think Elizabeth, Beth, and I had more fun with the walkie-talkies than the kids. Our bird count included sightings of: a male downy woodpecker, a hermit thrush, black-capped chickadees, a red-breasted nuthatch, a mallard, and a shrike! Our data will be joined with Mrs. Kingsbury’s and pre-school’s and submitted to the feeder watch coordinator. Scientists will use our data to analyze bird populations, so it was important that everyone count their birds exactly the same way. more than 50,000 observers across North America participate each year in this all-day census of early-winter bird populations. The results of their efforts are compiled into the longest running database in ornithology, representing over a century of unbroken data on trends of early-winter bird populations across the Americas. (Look on the science page for more photos. UPDATE….HOURS LATER…THE PICTURES ARE NOT UPLOADING FOR SOME REASON. THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING. KEEP LOOKING BECAUSE WE HAVE FABULOUS BIRD PICTURES.)
