The Great Back Yard Bird Count is next month! This is what turned us on to birding last year. This and the fact that we watched baby robins hatch in our yard.
This is a fun program the whole family can participate in. Experience isn't necessary but there are a couple of things you can start now that will help you have a successful experience:
1. Get your bird feeders up now.
It helps if there is an established group coming to your yard. Sometimes it takes a while for the message to get out to all the neighborhood birds. You can make your own bird feeders or buy inexpensive ones at any hardware store and even some grocery stores. They also sell bird food at most of these establishments. Once you have bird feeders set up it's important to be consistent about providing food.
2. It is also important to be able to properly identify the birds. Books from the library can help. Whatbird.com is an extremely helpful site. You might want to search for a local web site too. Here in Utah, we have utahbirds.org
It is fun to take part in a scientific study. And rewarding too. It makes us so happy when we can identify birds and their songs. We appreciate them so much more.
Go to the web site, http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc for complete details.
Happy Birding!
3 comments:
Great post! Inspired me to look up a bird website for Idaho. It's http://www.idahobirds.net/
we're going to do this--thanks for the links. i needed something to kick our science back into gear. this is perfect. i'd better go get some feeders this weekend.
I've seen bald eagles in the general neighborhood but that probably doesn't count. Not exactly a feeder bird :)
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