The Great Backyard Bird Count

Fellow homeschoolers, fellow admirers of birds...

this post is for you! 

On Sunday, our little group will once again press our noses and/or binoculars to the window panes in search of our feathered friends.  For a mere 15 minutes, we will watch and count and record all of the birds that we can see in our backyard.  We will have some field guides (and Kati) handy, to assist us in identifying the species.  Then we'll enter our data on the GBBC web site, and we will have had a quick and easy science lesson, and we will have aided the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the National Audubon Society, and Bird Studies Canada in the gathering of important information.  



As part of our bird theme for the day, we will also guide the children in dissecting an owl pellet.  (Some are more excited than others.)  We will label our disposable cups with different bird names.  We will listen to some bird calls on CD.  We may even eat some bird-shaped cookies. 

(Think we can do this, Kati?!)

source

On Monday, I will have Bekah return to the web site to peruse some of the data, look at some maps, see how many birders have reported from our area, perhaps play some games or solve some puzzles.  We may even observe for another 15-minute session. 

Of course, all you really need to do is count birds for 15 minutes, and log your data.  If you'd like to join the thousands in North America who are participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count, then just fly on over to ~this link~ and find out how!