Green Hour #5: Making a list

"It is truly wonderful how love-telling the small voices of these birds are, and how far they reach through the woods into one another's hearts and into ours." --John Muir

"O quick quick quick, quick hear the song-sparrow,
Swamp-sparrow, fox-sparrow, vesper-sparrow
At dawn and dusk. Follow the dance
Of the goldfinch at noon. Leave to chance
The Blackburnian warbler, the shy one. Hail
With shrill whistle the note of the quail, the bob-white....
All are delectable. Sweet sweet sweet...
--Landscapes, T.S. Elliot

(Photo by Cheryl Peterson)

This week for Green Hour we made a list of local birds we would like to study. We hoped to spot some on our walk this week, but we heard more than saw the birds in the Provo canyon. I think the birds can hear my kids coming from miles away and all take to the very tops of the trees safely out of sight. They sent out warning cries and were jabbering with each other up there. I want to learn to tell their songs. We know the chickadee's song because they call to us every morning to fill up the feeder. We know the magpie's song, but he hasn't come back yet. The robin has come a few times to our backyard. And we often see several house finches in our feeders. I have found this website to be very helpful: Whatbird.com

Here is the list we came up with (we will probably add more to it).

After a while of walking around we saw a group of birds eating insects in a clearing on the ground. There were about 20 of them. They blended right in with the brown gray grass. The didn't seem to mind us looking at them. Wouldn't you know, the batteries to my camera ran out, so I could not take a picture. We were not sure what they were, but looked it up when we got home. I'm pretty sure the birds we saw were Black Phoebes, but they are not typically found this far north.

(picture taken from Las Pilitas)

We also saw a river otter! We were very excited about that! We have never seen a river otter here in Utah before. This was the best picture I could take before the batteries went kaput. The shy otter moved very fast.

(you might have to enlarge the picture to even see it.)

We enjoyed being outside so much!
At home we talked about taxonomy and some bird myths and legends. We really like the book, "A Guide to Birding" compiled by Forshaw, Howell, Lindsey, and Stallcup that we got from the library last week.

Anna was curious about what the birds were picking up.

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