martinzoo

This morning we did our bird count for the Great Backyard Bird Count being held all across the country from February 16 - 19.

When I woke up this morning I heard tons of birds in our backyard, and my first thought was that they had found all our feeders. We got our gear (binoculars, camera, pad of paper, pen, and bird field guide) together, bundled up, and went out to count… even before breakfast. We were that excited to start.

It was supposed to last only 15 minutes, but it was so relaxing and interesting, so we stayed out an hour, only coming in when our fingers felt half frozen.

While we were out there we saw: 6 Tufted Titmouse, 2 Bluejay, 3 House Sparrows, 9 Mourning Dove, 2 Cardinals, 7 American Crow, a Red-headed Woodpecker, and a Red-bellied Woodpecker. We saw lots of others but couldn’t definitively identify them. We, later in the afternoon, saw a HUGE hawk-like bird on the way to my sister’s house, but again, couldn’t identify it while it was in flight.

This is the Red-headed Woodpecker

It’s hard to see within all these branches, but this is one of the Cardinals.

I don’t know what this one was, but I liked the ominous look of the photo.

We had homeschooling today.

Shhhhhh! GB doesn’t know it.

Tomorrow is the Great Backyard Bird Count. So today we learned how to identify some common birds for our area. We also made five bird feeders from pine cones, peanut butter, and bird seed. GB had so much fun and so did I. The dogs were very interested in what we were doing and followed us all around the yard as we attached them to trees.