Monday, February 16, 2009

Last Day of the Great Backyard Bird Count

Number of Species: 11

Checklist:
Turkey Vulture - 1
Mourning Dove - 7
Downy Woodpecker - 2
American Crow - 3
Black-capped Chickadee - 1
European Starling - 35
Dark-eyed Junco - 2
Northern Cardinal - 7
Red-winged Blackbird - 19
Common Grackle - 9
House Sparrow - 5

This was such a cool homeschool science project. Mikro's interest in birds and ability to identify them has grown by leaps and bounds. We had a lot of fun together! Today we tried observing at our feeders, but there was too much human activity in the neighborhood, so we headed over to the Nature Center and watched there. It was hard because we had the setting sun behind the feeders, backlighting everything and making it difficult to see, but we saw a great variety of birds (and sat in bird poop, oh well...)

4 comments:

Stephanie said...

We missed it this year. :/

I knew before, and then remembered Saturday afternoon.

Ah well. Next year!!

Congratulations on yours!

Garden State Kate said...

We saw very few birds the weekend
of the count...before the "count" we had lots, and since..lol.
It's like they knew we would be counting them...;-)

Chele said...

Hi, Stephanie. We missed it last year! I always plan on doing GBBC and Feeder Watch, but I'm horrid at remembering when to sign up for them. There's an advantage this year in signing up late for Feeder Watch, it seems. Cornell Lab of Ornithology is giving people who sign up late next year for free (I think it's usually $12 or 15...) and automatically sending out packets next fall. So we just signed up for it, and my spotty memory can't hurt us next year...

Chele said...

Hi, Kate. We cheated on Monday-- we had so few birds at our feeders that we drove to the county park where they have a huge feeder array, and that's how we managed to see so many birds. We're having really sad luck with Feeder Watch. On count days, we've seen nothing but a few juncos. Non-count days, we've had the fun birds like white breasted nuthatches and woodpeckers...