There’s nothing like the smiles on your kids’ faces when they are able to emerge from the house after several cold, rainy days to the backyard and they hear the wonderful sounds of different birds chirping. In our backyard, in sunny California, those chirps are often the Black Phoebe and Anna’s Hummingbird as they fly between the pine trees of our neighbor’s backyard to the 12 palm trees in our yard. It seems like you get a close-up view in winter as the trees are bare making birds easy to find and they will often be right on the patio searching for food.
The variety of birds can be heard and seen throughout the day. When we first saw the Black Phoebe, we noticed there were many coming to our yard often to sit on the fence, or the edge of our swimming pool. We didn’t know what they were, so our next stop was to our local bookstore where we found a comprehensive bird field guide on North American birds, with many beautiful drawings of different birds (searching online was too comprehensive, not knowing the bird’s name). Once we found it in the book, we couldn’t wait to research the details about our new avian friend. You can find the same field guide we love using by clicking here: http://amzn.to/4pRQ2Q5
I found as a mom, keeping the excitement alive for birdwatching was a relatively easy task. Once identified, my kids had many questions about each bird, as did I. I created a birdwatching log for my kids to write down the birds they found, what the birds were doing, draw their sightings, and write more questions they had after spotting a particular bird. The log has space to record a dozen bird sightings and provides a keepsake to have for their activities in birding this winter. You can find the log I made for my kids to use in the BackyardScienceStories store. Happy backyard birdwatching, I hope you and your kids love it as much as we do!
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