Birds Tweet Tweet: Part 1

We really missed the Great Backyard Bird Count this year.  Still, my kids wake up every morning commenting on all the tweet tweets in our backyard.  A few weeks ago my 8yr. old mentioned how we needed to add the first sighting of birds in our yard into our Book of Firsts.  The sounds can't go unnoticed so early this week I decided we needed to set up some bird feeders so the kids could get a good look at our new neighbors more closely.  I have lots of pine cones sitting in our nature basket from our winter evergreen studies ; )  so we took a few and covered them in smooth peanut butter then rolled them in bird seeds.  We tied some twine rope on them and hung them on the closest tree to our glass backyard sliding doors.  We put them out on Tuesday afternoon.

The kids have checked every morning ... and guess what ...  there must have been about 15 little birds near that tree bright and early today.  Meet the White Crowned Sparrow common to California's coastal regions:

Zonotrichia leucophrys

The kids plopped down on the ground and watched these little guys have a feast.  We did have some strong winds the past few days so many of the seeds were also all over our grass less yard (we're working on that!):

After some time to observe and some nature journaling we headed over to the computer to find out more about them.  We found this WhatBird.com site that also has a small clip of their sound calls.  Well, yes, that is exactly what we've been listening too lately : D

My 6yo, wait, (as of today) 7yo nature journal page

 

My 8 yo page ( I just noticed she needs to check the calendar)


I think we just found our spring study topic ; D