This morning while my children were out walking our bunny, Joy, they found a dead bird in our yard. It's been there for some time b/c the skeleton was now visible, along with a little of it's wing.

So....we took this opportunity to study the avian ( bird ) skeleton up close and compare it to our own skeletons.  I also found this neat worksheet that we used to discuss, label and draw in our nature journals. This would have been great to go along with our Bird Study that we did several months ago.

We've had a couple visitors this week. My son, Kaden, he is the official bird spotter. It seems he's the one to spot our feathered friends.

This time is was a Downy Woodpecker. Beautiful white spots on black feathers. The males have a small red patch on their head. Here's a close up picture I found online.

We watched him from the window in awe as he pecked away. It was quite comical. All of us starring in wide-eyed wonder of this magnificant creature God made. Dad tried to open the window to hear him pecking, but as soon as he did, our friend flew away. But we were able to watch & draw him for about 10 minutes. Long enough to look in our field guide to be sure that he was in fact a Downy, and find out a couple facts about him.  This was as close as we've ever been to one.......right outside our front window.

 <~~~ he's on this side of the tree, where the branches start to come out from the trunk........in this bottom picture, he moved to the top section of our tree.

Our other visitor was a Common Grackle ~ not quite as exciting, but a new visitor to our yard nonetheless. 

Bird sounds are amazing, aren't they? I'm sure we aren't the only family that stops when they hear a bird calling. We often wonder what they are saying to one another. We sometimes make up conversations as we listen like 'Hey Fred, how's this bird seed workin for ya today?' I'm sure they wouldn't be impressed by our silliness.

 Just yesterday, as we listened to a familiar bird song outside, my oldest said, ' They're using their voices to praise Jesus.' And of course that's exactly what they're doing when they sing! How special!! When we think of it this way, the sounds take on a whole new meaning.

We used the information here to talk about the differences in 'calls' & 'songs.'  Then we did a short activity to help reiterate how birds recognize its own species calls or songs.

I gathered 10 Snapple bottles, paired them up, put various amounts of water into the pairs; and then concealed the outside so the kids couldn't see the amount of water. The kids and I then blew into the bottles to make a 'bird call' and we had to listen carefully to each 'call' to find its matching species. ( the bottle with the same amount of water ) It was a little tricky at first, getting the blow right, but we got it and it was a lot of fun!!

We used the following two books in our study today: 

Our Living World ~ Birds by Edward Ricciuti

&

Secrets of the Animal World ~ Birds, Masters of Flight by Eulalia Garcia

We learned about the inside and outside of birds. Here is Kaden's drawings. We also used this worksheet and cut, glued, and labeled, the main inside parts.

A couple things we found interesting during our reading:

• the female bird has a shell gland that is used to make the shells of her baby eggs
• God made some bird bones hollow, called phneumatic bones, to keep them light

  What do the form & structure of a bird's legs and feet tells us?

They reveal the birds habitat! Really, it does.....stay with me for a minute. For the most part, the legs and feet of birds are covered in reptilelike scales. Each of their toes has a claw at the tip. Most birds have four toes, some have three and a few, like the ostrich, have only two. The position & number of toes, the length of the toe & claw, the thickness of the toes and if the toes are webbed -- tell us about about the habitat, feeding & the way the bird gets around town.

• Wading birds, like the Heron, have long slender toes to support them on mud or other vegetation
• All swimming birds, well there are a few exceptions, use their feet to help propel them. Their toes are either lobed, like Grebes, or fully webbed, like ducks.
• Raptor birds, have long, sharp claws ( talons ) that help them graps, kill and carry their dinner. Ospreys are an example of that -- they use their talons to catch and hold slippery fish.
• Perching birds, like a cardinal, have skinny toes for wrapping around branches & twigs.  Most of these have three toes in fromt and one in back. The Woodpecker is an exception, it has two in front and two in back to help brace themselves as they peck at our lovely trees.
• Birds that live on the ground, like the turkey or quail, have thick, short toes. The ostrich, however, has only two huge thick toes and small claws. I would hate to be the woman that does this birds pedicure! ICK!

Here the kids colored a worksheet where they had to match birds with a pair of claws.

 And here we took Fimo clay and made a few bird feet of our own......dad and mom even made a couple! The kids also had some fun with the clay, as you can see in the pictures......had to throw those in too!

Why do birds have different beaks? Today we found out!

 We did a small activity to help us understand.

I put various items into containers: popcorn kernels, rice, beads, peanuts, dry pasta, bird seed, crackers, dried berries

I asked the kids to use chopsticks and popsicle sticks to try and pick up the objects. We recorded beforehand, what we thought would be easier to pick up and with what instrument.

We compared our hypothesis to what we were able to do with the two different sticks. As you can guess some things were easier with the popsicle sticks than the chopsticks.

We were able to show that God designed the various beaks ( the proper way to say it is 'bills' ) according to what a bird eats. There are short thin bills for insect eaters, short thick bills for seed eaters, long thin bills for probing flowers for nectar or soft mud for worms, & strong hooked bills for tearing meat.

Jayda's notebooking page

~ A few 'bill' facts ~

Birds do not chew their food, they use their bills to tear chunks off or to crush lumpy items before swallowing them.

The longest bill in the world belongs to the Australian Pelican. My kids said, 'Like on Finding Nemo.' Ok yes, we watched it over and over when it first came out.

The Sword-billed Hummingbird has a bill longer than the rest of its body.

A birds bill continues to grow throughout the birds life, this is necessary to replace the wearing that occurs at the tips.

Food isn't the only role that the bill has a part in. The Puffin's bill grows a set of colorful scales during the spring to help attract a mate. After, these scales are lost again making the bill duller and lighter. Isn't that interesting?! Hmm......here darlin, I grew some colorful scales just for you. I'm glad God didn't make us to do that. *snicker, snicker*

I honestly never thought about the various bills out there until gathering the info to do this study. I got to thinking, man, if people would study nature, study His marvelous works, there would be no doubt there is an Awesome Creator. How creative, how ingenious is our God?! Super amazing......and all we have to do is take a longer look at the world around us to see that.

I got this idea from Nature Mama at Nature Notes from Above, though we substituted a few things.

Cut and gut a pomelo, be sure to cut only the very top portion, just until you see the fruit so you have a big enough 'bowl.'

We ate the insides, mmmmmm -- tastes very much like a grapefruit.

1 lb lard and 2 cups peanut butter ~ we doubled this since we made two. We thought the lard would be terrible for birds since we know its awful for people, but no the birds need that kind of fat surprisingly.

Melt peanut butter & lard then remove from heat.

To the pot, add 4 cups bird seed and 2 cups oatmeal. More bird seed if it needs to be thicker. Let cool. 

Add string ( we used a heavy string ) to the sides of the pomelo, 1 inch down so it has room to 'give' if the weight of the birds and the seed start to tear the outside.

String grapes ( or cranberries like Nature Mama ) I would have prefered cranberries but they are out of season at the moment.

Fill your bowl with the cooled feed and hang! We made two and hung them on a double shepherds hook, one lower then the other.

We've been on the look out for nests and found several around our home. That sparked the kids & I to search out the various kinds of nests & what bird builds them.

There are 5 major types of nests:

cavity ~ a hollowed-out opening in the trunk of a tree, either found naturally in dead trees or made by birds such as woodpeckers; the cavity is smallest at the beginning of the opening and is largest inside the trunk where eggs are laid. Chickadees, nutatches & bluebirds are cavity nesters.

cup ~ cup-shaped; the material on the outside of the nest is more coarse and thick, the inside is usually more soft to cushion the eggs and keep them warm. the songbirds such as sparrows, finches, thrushes & even hummingbirds are cup nesters.

platform ~ mostly flat and supported by tree limbs. crows, ravens and birds in the raptor group like hawks & eagles build platform nests. The raptors build very large nests on tops of dead trees. This nest is also found in marshy areas and used by waterfowl.

spherical ~ ball-shaped, with a single hole on one side. Marsh Wrens will build many of these nests at one time, but only use one as their "active" nest. The other "dummy" nests are used to confuse predators from finding the nests with eggs or young. ( we thought this was COOL!  )

here's a link with more. HERE

Here's a nest we found.

Here's another one we found near a tree that we brought home to study. It's super cool, such wonderful builders. Just as the 'cup nest' above mentions, its hard on the outside and had softer material inside. Even mom was impressed!

We also made bird nest treats.

We collected things on our nature walks this week, eyeing anything we thought a bird could pick up and use to build his nest with. Using some of it, we 'tried' building our own nests which allowed us to see just how smart God made His creatures of the air. It's very difficult! Certianly gives us an appreication for our 'tweet, tweet' friends.