Novice birders

Our obsession with Big Red and Ezra inspired us to use our election day-off from school for a little birding. This was our first attempt and I can't say it was a failure because we all came home happy but it was not an amazing success in terms of quantity of birds spotted and certainly not in terms of birds actually identified. We did see birds and named a few and perhaps most important of all, played at a playground for awhile.

I took the kids to Peace Valley Park- a lovely spot for birding, exercising, and enjoying nature, about 20 minutes from our home. We brought our binoculars and Peterson's field guide and warm jackets since it was pretty chilly outside. The field guide was donated to our homeschool by my parents since they had an extra. The binoculars also came from my parents, but not so recently. They bought them when I was in 3rd grade. My teacher, Mrs. Eleanor Franey, encouraged all the parents to buy the students binoculars when we were doing a bird unit. I don't think that unit was part of any curriculum the district had put together. Mrs. Franey was just an incredible teacher who taught beyond the basic and opened up the world for her students. Maybe it is lame to be using a 25 year old pair of binoculars, but I think it is pretty cool that my kids are watching birds with them. Thank you Mrs. Franey!

Just a few tips if you ever go birding with kids:
1. The noise of the stroller will scare birds away,
2. The skipping and running children will scare birds away,
3. The singing children will scare birds away, and lastly
4. If in the unlikely event that you have met some stalwart and fearless bird who has withstood your efforts at family birding, your children will never agree on what bird in the field guide it actually is.

We met a few such birds. The robin and the blue jay and the vulture were easily agreed upon. However, we may have seen several tufted titmouses with no tufts, an eastern phoebe, and some brownish bird with a bright yellow mark no one could agree on.

The final birds of the trip were the best and thank goodness everyone accepted my classification as "great blue heron." So beautiful and graceful. A happy way to end it all.

Here's a shot of my best birders.