Youth Birding Competition Results

Here is our schedule and what the kids identified at the YBC this year. S means they saw it, H means they heard it and B means both. The boys won their age group again this year, despite moving from Pre-elementary to Elementary. They took first place for number of species identified. They also raised more money for conservation than any other team in the competition, raising over $500 for the American Bird Conservancy. We intend to put the money toward ABC's Hawaiian birds project, as someone is willing to match it, which will double the impact of our contribution.

Here is that list:

4-25-09
5:00-6:15 p.m.
EL Huie

Purple Martin B
Canada Goose S
Barn Swallow S
American Crow H
Mallard S
Great Blue Heron S
Double Crested Cormorant S
Tree Swallow S
Red-winged Blackbird B
Killdeer B

6:15-7:30 p.m.
Newman Wetlands

Prothonotary Warbler H
Mourning Dove B
Pine Warbler B
N. Cardinal B
E. Meadowlark H
Carolina Chickadee H
Blue Jay H
Red-bellied Woodpecker H
Red-eyed Vireo H
Tufted Titmouse H
N. Parula H
American Goldfinch S
White-breasted Nuthatch B
Brown-headed Nuthatch B
Catbird H

7:30-8:00 p.m.
EL Huie

Bank Swallow S

8:00 p.m.
Outside Shamrock/Blaylock

Palm Warbler H
Yellow Warbler H

8:15-8:30 p.m.
Nash Farms

Blue-winged Warbler H
Eastern Towhee H
Brown Thrasher H
Chestnut-sided Warbler H

4-26-09
6:00-6:30 a.m.

Black-crowned Night Heron H
Eastern Screech Owl H

7:00-8:00 a.m.
Charlie Elliott

Carolina Wren H
Common Grackle B
Eastern Kingbird S
Chimney Swift S
Belted Kingfisher H
White-eyed Vireo S
Indigo Bunting H
Eastern Phoebe H
Pileated Woodpecker H
Scarlet Tanager B
Cedar Waxwing H
Prairie Warbler H
Downy Woodpecker H
Cape May Warbler H
Chipping Sparrow S

9:25-10:30 a.m.
Driving between CE and around Monticello

Wild Turkey S
Turkey Vulture S
Black Vulture S
Field Sparrow H
N. Mockingbird S
American Robin H
House Finch H

10:30 a.m.- 3:00 p.m
Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge

American Redstart H
Black-throated Green Warbler H
Common Yellowthroat H
Great-crested Flycatcher H
Red-cockaded Woodpecker H
Northern Rough-winged Swallow S
Black and White Warbler H
Eastern-wood Pewee H
Blackburnian Warbler H
Bay-breasted Warbler H
Orange-crowned Warbler H
Cerulean Warbler H
Black-throated Blue Warbler H
Worm-eating warbler H
Tennessee Warbler H

4:45 p.m.
Charlie Elliot

Pine Siskin H

S= Seen
H= Heard
B= Both

April 23, 2009

Today we had two beautiful male Rose-breasted Grosbeaks at the feeders. I wonder where the females were? They stayed for a long time and we got to enjoy watching them. We also had two Pine Siskins, 2 Mourning Doves, a Tufted Titmouse, a Carolina Chickadee and a couple of unidentified sparrows. I was alone, and tried to ID them, but could not. Too bad the boys weren't with me, they would have definitely known!

Something else rather surprising happened today. A Pileated Woodpecker flew up on the deck. It actually flew to the window, grabbed hold of the screen and pecked at the window glass a few times. David had already heard it earlier in the day, pecking at the deck, and all of the boys were right at the window when it flew up, so they got an incredibly close look at it! That definitely goes on our list for "Season's strangest sightings"!

Finishing the Bird Garden

Our bird garden has turned out to be a much bigger project than we ever anticipated! We thought it would be done in a couple of months, but here we are, one year later, finally with an end in sight! It was too hot to work outside in the summer, so this has been primarily a spring-fall-spring project for us.

Spring 2008 and fall 2008 were mainly about planting. During Phase One we put many trees and shrubs into the ground, focusing on those that are known to provide shelter and food for a variety of birds. Our neighbor built us a lovely feeding station and we have enjoyed many hours watching birds at the platform feeder, on the suet and peanut feeders and on the mixed seed feeder.


My dad and I installed drip lines to water the plants. This enables me to water all the plants simultaneously with one turn of the hose, and it ensures that water goes all the way down to the roots. I love the drip line system!

Now we are in the final phase. The boys are working very diligently to finish this project, as they have a desire to enter it into a local arm of the Keep America Beautiful competition. This was their dream and their vision from the start, and they have worked hard to bring it to fruition. We have many feathered friends visiting daily now, and often we see or hear new species that haven't come to our yard in the past. This phase, though, is about putting the finishing touches on to make this extra appealing to the birds, as well as making the garden attractive to humans. We want it to be a place that we will enjoy sitting in, as we watch the birds flitting from tree to tree or feeding on seeds.

Hummingbird Hollow
Up till now, all our plantings have focused on songbirds. Last week we dug up an area at one edge of the garden and planted lantana, spirea, and butterfly bushes. We also put some hummingbird feeders there. The boys have nicknamed this part of the garden Hummingbird Hollow.

The Dust Bath
The boys were keen to put in a dust bath. Birds like to "bathe" themselves in dust, and it helps their feathers. We've seen birds doing this before and wanted to build our own. The boys dug out a large hole this week, about 6 inches deep and about 2' x 2' square. They filled it with equal parts sifted ash, sand and dirt from the hole, and lined the edge with rocks. We placed a small feeder, low to the ground, to help draw the birds' attention. This has been one of their favorite projects!


Brush pile and rock piles
Some birds like to forage in brush piles or under rocks for insects, so the boys constructed some of each.

Water features
The boys have dreamed of putting in a pond, but I have said that they can do that when they are all old enough to dig it and maintain it themselves. For now, we put up one birdbath near the house, and plan to put out another bird bath deeper in the garden soon.

They have also put out nesting materials, such as feathers, cut bits of string from a string mop and some unprocessed cotton fibers that are in a hanging cage (this was a gift that someone purchased for them at a birding specialty store).

Hummingbird Hollow
Up until now, all of our plant selections have focused on songbirds. We saved one small area of the garden for hummingbirds, and planted it this week. We put in some lantana, some butterfly bushes (including some which I transplanted from our butterfly garden in the back yard), some Bridal Wreath (spirea), and filled it out with several blueberry bushes for songbirds. We put another feeding station in hummingbird hollow: it is a tall pole with hooks on it, from which we've hung two hummingbird feeders.

More new plantings
We have several holly bushes, leyland cypress, Little Giant pines, Little Gem magnolias, crepe myrtle, snowball bushes, and other trees and shrubs already planted, but we still had a wish list of a few more. Last week we were able to get the blueberry bushes we wanted, as well as four tall, spiky grasses. I don't know their name (I thought they were Pampas, but they don't have the feathery top). These grasses grow several feet tall and some birds like to hide in them. We also planted a flowering cherry tree.

We put an order in at our local greenhouse for a Flowering Dogwood tree, a Washington Hawthorne, some weigela, and more spirea. Tomorrow we hope to fill the last four holes dug in spring 2008 if some of these trees and shrubs have come in. We have had some empty black planting buckets sitting in the holes over the past year to keep them from filling up too much with leaves and debris.

Final projects
We spent much of last week working on making the bird garden more functional and attractive for us. We put down groundcloth for weed protection in the flower beds (especially hummingbird hollow), and covered it all with mulch. The kids hauled what seemed to be literally tons of rock, gleaned from other places in our yard, and used it to line all the paths and beds throughout the garden. It was a big job, but fortunately (?) our soil has lots of small and large boulders. We even have some that are big enough to sit on, but we haven't managed to get any of those over to the bird garden. All this rock didn't seem fortunate when we were working on digging holes and planting, but it has saved us a lot of money and time on edging. The garden has a very natural, rustic look with all the rock, and we all feel a sense of pride that we did this ourselves with rock from our own property.


Building the Garden Path
Once we outlined the entire path and all the beds in rock it was time to mulch the path and all the flower beds. We purchased mulch in contrasting colors, mulching all the paths through the garden in red and the flower beds in brown cypress. We initially wanted to lay stepping stones but that proved too expensive. Using mulch was a cost effective and simple way to construct the garden path. My oldest son already knew how to lay down ground cloth and spread mulch, and we think the path turned out fantastic. It was easier and less expensive than many of the other alternatives we had considered.

We placed an old bench and a couple of children's outdoor chairs in the garden, and we purchased a new bench that we have yet to put together.

Finishing Touches
This week is about taking care of all the finishing touches before the boys submit their project application on Wednesday.

Each of the boys built birdhouses with their grandpa, intended for drawing different kinds of birds to the garden. We got those hung today, and the boys were proud. They had a Bluebird house, a Chickadee house, and a Tufted Titmouse house which we hung. We have not hung their Purple Martin house yet as we are trying to figure out a way to get it high enough. I am thinking of drilling it to the top of our wooden swingset.


The boys also have named each part of the garden, and they want to construct small signs with names like "Hummingbird Hollow", "Robin Road", "Dove Dust Bath", "Nuthatch Neighborhood", and the like. Our oldest son plans to put small signs at the base of each tree with its English and scientific name. He had fun today hanging a Tree Face to give the garden some whimsical personality!

Although we won't be using stepping stones throughout the garden paths, the boys each wanted to make one stepping stone out of concrete. We are studying Ancient Rome right now and they had the idea of doing a different bird mosaic on each of the stones and displaying them in the garden. I've never worked with concrete before, but I hope to complete that project with them in April. It won't be in time for the competition, but I know it will be fun, and a great way for the boys to tie some of their history studies in with this big science project!

For more photos and details about what we did, see my past posts on this project:

Our Bird Garden

Fruits of the Bird Garden

Empowering Kids to Run with Their Ideas

Migration Pattern

We saw a huge flock come through our yard today. We got video this year, but I haven't been able to view it yet to determine whether they were grackles or starlings or something else. It is raining and they were flying fast, not stopping long.

I looked over my notes from last year and saw that they flew through this same week, perhaps even on this very day. I wrote on December 7th that "this week we had a large flock come through". Today is December 4th. I also wrote last year that "they came through at this time last year, as well". Unfortunately, I didn't know the importance at that time of recording exact dates, but as near as I can pinpoint it, it seems as if they fly through the first week in December every year, and possibly even on December 4th each year. We'll have to wait until next year to know for sure!! I'll try to upload the video from this year and the photos from last year soon.

Fruits of the Bird Garden

We've had so much success spotting birds this past week that we've been getting up before dawn almost every day to see what we can find in the yard. The boys have enjoyed lots of birding, finding old favorites and spotting some new finds, as well. We continue to marvel at how many more birds we are seeing with our multi-purpose feeding station, built for us by a kind neighbor, Mr. S.

There is a platform feeder with black oil sunflower seeds, a hanging nut feeder, a mixed seed feeder with a roof on top and a hummingbird feeder. Looking out the window right now I can see a ruby throated hummingbird, two cardinals, a chickadee, an Eastern Towhee and two mourning doves, each perched on a different feeder or eating seeds from the ground.

Our bird garden, now 4 months old, is the perfect spot for these birds to take cover, and the feeding station gets even more visitors thanks to its perfect spot. The Rose Breasted Grosbeaks have continued to come back daily, along with mockingbirds and our other usual visitors. In fact, today we had two male Rose breasted Grosbeaks as well as the female. We've seen two woodpeckers this week as well, in or near the bird garden (not at the feeding station).

Tonight K and I heard a cerulean warbler and a hooded warbler in a wooded area down the street, but we could never spot either one.

Now that the weather has cooled, we are ready for phase two of our bird garden project. There are still several holes (dug in the spring) awaiting trees or shrubs, and we want to put a gravel path and some benches in, as well as a water feature. There is some discrepancy about that, as I want a simple bird bath whereas the boys want to dig a pond! I think birdbath will win out, and they can put a pond in later, when they are big enough to dig it and maintain it themselves!

The boys each built a birdhouse, aimed at attracting a particular bird, with the help of their grandfather. We have a purple martin house, a towhee house and a finch house. I hope to get those put up in the bird garden this month, as well.

I had also planned to transplant several butterfly bushes, but it looks like I may not need to. I can see where it looks like some have come up on their own, probably spreading from the butterfly garden in the backyard.

Rose breasted Grosbeaks

It is migration season! We've all been out birding in our yard this week. The bird garden with its feeding station has drawn a lot to our yard. We've added some new birds to our life list.

Yesterday we (K, C and I) all saw both male and female Rose breasted Grosbeaks. They spent a long time at the feeder and in a tree at the edge of the garden. We also saw a hummingbird which we could not identify. We spotted a gray catbird, which was new for me, though K had seen it before. It was exciting to pore over the bird guide, finally identifying the gray bird with a buffy underside to its tail.

Today K saw a white-eyed vireo, which was new for his life list. He was out at 7:30 to try and spot some early birds. K and C also both saw the female towhee two days in a row, also for the life list.

Other findings, not new for us, were the Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Cardinals, Chipping Sparrow, Ruby Throated Hummingbirds (a pair), Rose breasted Grosbeak was back today, male Eastern Towhee, Common Yellowthroat, Mourning Doves, male Purple Finch, Downy Woodpecker, Red headed Woodpecker, and Black Vultures (yesterday on our way to speak and today near the house...new for our neighborhood).

Teaching other kids about birding

K, C and I were invited to speak to a class of homeschool kids about birds and birdwatching today. I hope it was as much fun for them as it was for us! I wasn't sure how it would go, as the boys were terribly nervous. We had spent a couple of days preparing, so they were ready to go, but they were daunted to see a class of older children looking at them. K froze a bit at the beginning, but he relaxed after awhile. When it was all over he told me, "I wish we were still there teaching right now! That was a lot better than I expected it would be!" And C said he would love to do that again sometime.

When my boys started birding they were 3 and 5 years old. We shared with the class how we began birdwatching at home, putting out different feeders with different kinds of seeds in view of the windows. The boys passed samples of various kinds of seed around the class, as well as three different kinds of feeders. They also displayed some bird houses they had built themselves with Grandpa, each designed to attract a particular species of bird.

We talked to the kids about field marks, taking along a diagram about the parts of a bird and many plush Audubon birds for the kids to look at. Each boy chose an Audubon bird and used it to explain the field markings on the head, body, wings and tail. We talked about different kinds of beaks, too. They encouraged the kids to also judge the bird's size. Is it as small as a cell phone or is it the size of a can of coke? The boys think the Great Blue Heron's body is about as big as a watermelon if you don't count its head and legs!

Next, we did an activity to teach about using binoculars. Most kids see a bird with their eyes and then look down at their binoculars. When they raise the binoculars and try to find the bird, they can't locate it again. We taught the kids to find the bird with their eyes and then raise the binocs to their face, without moving their gaze from the bird. The binocs should be trained on the bird. To facilitate this exercise, we gave each child two empty toilet paper rolls, and placed several keychain sized birds around the room for them to spot. We also told them to be sure and move the tubes toward their nose until they could only see one single round image, rather than two images. They worked in pairs to spot a plush bird through the tubes, and then describe it to their partner (its field marks and its location in the room). Then their partner was told to use their instructions to also locate the bird in their homemade binocs. We passed out a few pairs of binocs for the kids to practice with, as well, but the room was not large. It was easier for them to do this exercise with the toilet paper tubes than with the actual binocs.

Some of the children were faster with this exercise than others. We gave the groups that finished a plush bird and a field guide, with some instructions about how to use the guide. We had a color coded guide, which was our boys' first guide (Stokes Beginners Guide). We also had two Kaufmann guides, which are excellent for beginners (thanks to a pictorial index) and a Young Birders Guide (Peterson). The kids had the chance to look through their field guide and try to match the plush bird they were looking at. They really seemed to enjoy that activity.

Next we talked about birding by ear. The boys taught about mnemonic devices, and how they have used mnemonic devices in their birding. We taught the kids about the benefits of birding by ear, and shared with them about the boys' science fair project last year (in which they learned that subjects who learned bird calls with the aid of a mnemonic device remembering them much better than those learning calls with no mnemonic device). Then we did a little game, where I placed 10 audubon plush birds in a pillowcase and allowed the children to squeeze one bird without showing it to Knox and Colin. They were able to identify each bird by its call alone. When they guessed the bird, I took it out of the pillowcase to confirm. They got all 10 calls correct. Between them and their two teammates they've memorized over 100 calls collectively, so this exercise wasn't too tough for them. But it was fun for the kids watching and seemed to make quite an impression! We also showed the Identiflyer to the class, which we use frequently in birding by ear.

We finished up by telling the kids some good places to look when birdwatching, and then gave each child a packet from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Celebrate Urban Birds! Project. Our kids have really enjoyed this activity, which has children spend 10 minutes watching for birds in a location of their choice (it can be their own backyard). After 10 minutes the children complete a very brief questionnaire which allows the scientists at Cornell to determine which species are living in which areas at this time of year. They use Google Earth to plot the location exactly, and the children are given two posters which show pictures and sillhouettes of each bird they are looking for. Cornell has highlighted the birds they want kids to search for, but all findings can be reported. There was also a sticker in the kit which says "Zero means a lot", because even if nothing is found, scientists can learn from that, too.

All in all it was a great day. I'd like K to take the Communicators for Christ class and then try this again. The boys were excited to do another presentation, and I think if we did a few that it would be great for them. This is an excellent way for them to begin to hone their own communication skills, on a topic where they feel comfortable and which they are truly excited about.