Bird contest winners!

Well...I have to say I was, um, overwhelmed by the response to the contest. (hee hee)
We do have a couple of stalwarts and I heartily thank them for their participation.

The grand prize goes to

The Culwell family from Black and Blue!

First prize goes to

The Carlow family, who submitted this lovely photo!

If you could please email me an address, we will send your prizes to you pronto!

Please email to: leesybeesy@gmail.com

Thank you so much again!

A successful count.

It was a great weekend to spy on our fine feathered friends. I was a little worried on Saturday, because of the rain, but Sunday and Monday were nice days and we had plenty of visitors.

Here are some of the friends we saw:

A female downy woodpecker.


An American Robin.


Black-capped Chickadees (Mountain).


Dark-eyed Juncos.


Mourning Doves.


Lots and lots of House Finches.


And thanks to the apple tree in our backyard we had a special visit from 4 Cedar Waxwings. We were so excited because we've never seen them in our backyard before!


We also saw a couple California quail and Western scrub-jays.

Be sure to share your pictures with us at our photo contest. To see more pictures from people who counted birds this weekend all across the country check out the official Great Backyard Bird Count site.

Wonder Years Photo Contest!

This is the weekend! The big one!

(No, I'm not talking about Valentine's or the Olympics)

It's the GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT!

So grab your binoculars, camera, bird guide and lists. Throw in a few snacks and a comfy chair and get ready to count!

Fist time? It's easy. Follow these simple instructions. You can count for 15 minutes or a whole day.

And because games are fun, we here at Wonder Years are hosting a photo contest.
Post ONE picture that you took while counting birds on your blog and give us the link to it here.
The picture must include a bird OR someone watching for birds. Entries will be received through Saturday, February 20th.

The prizes?
2nd and 3rd place winners will receive:

A fabulous bird seed apple shape!

To the Grand Prize winner goes the whole house:




























This fabulous bird house, that is. Handcrafted by Door County Woodworks.
So snap away, then be sure to link here.

Check back on Saturday, February 20th to see the winning photos!

Don't forget!

The Great Backyard Bird Count.
Feb 13-15

Start taking pictures! Our humble little blog will be hosting a "Backyard Birdie Photo Contest," that weekend.

Terrific prizes! Start snapping!

Someone I'd like you to meet....

This pretty little lady has become a regular at our feeders.


She's the only one that doesn't mind how many pictures I take of her.


She has a distinguishing feature. There is something wrong with her right eye. But that doesn't seem to bother her much. Claire said, "Mom, it's probably a lucky eye." Unfortunately, we've been calling her Popeye, but we're pretty sure she's a girl now, so I think we'll call her Lucky.


Man, I miss Sam and Elise so much. I was doing pretty good until today. Today, I really started to miss them a lot. Good thing they are coming home tomorrow. Hopefully with LOTS of pictures. We've skyped them a few times and boy! are they tan. Jealous.

It snowed here today.

Birds of a feather.....

Scrub Jay "bad western cousin of the more elegant Blue jay"

It's that time of year again. We've got our trusty binoculars on the kitchen shelf. The camera is always on hand and there's lots of bird seed in the shed.

Yes, we are getting ready for the Great Backyard Bird Count. This year it's Feburary 12-15. What better way to spend Valentines day, eh? I'm cooking up some fun bird themed valentines and activities for the kiddos. "Love birds...etc" eh? eh? It's going to be AWESOME.

If you've already got bird feeders in your yard, you're good to go. As long as you stay consistent about keeping food in them. If you don't have feeders, now is a good time to start. You want to get a regular, steady stream of birds for the Count, and sometimes it takes a few weeks before the figure out there's food in your yard. This will also give you time to identify and learn about some of the birds in your area. WhatBird has been a terrific resource, as well as books from the library.

Birds are so interesting to watch. So much more interesting than anything on TV.
So, what are you waiting for? Hurry and get your binoculars!

**correction** house finch on the left, house sparrow on the right


European Starling

Wordless Wednesday: Callipepla californica

Outdoor Hour: Birds in our Backyard

I love observing nature. Especially nature that is in my very own backyard. After about 3 weeks of waiting and bad weather, the birds have finally noticed our feeders. And boy are they flocking! These pictures were all taken this morning. I was especially taken with the Hermit Thrush's beautiful red accents.

Now I'm really wishing I had an extra grand to spend for a zoom lens.

What are your favorite birds?

Hermit Thrush

Western Scrub Jay

Dark-eyed Junco

Mourning Doves

Black-capped Chickedee

California Quail

Get ready to BIRD!

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!

Wordless Wednesday: Turdus migratorius

Green Hour #14: Babies

Proud Pappa

We are thrilled to announce that we have 4 healthy baby robins.

Hatch day 1

Hatch Day 2

Hatch Day 3

My kids were a little disturbed by the ugly, nakedness. "Why don't they look cute and fluffy?" they asked. Well, the folks over at Journey North have a good answer. It's a little lengthy, but very informative:

The reason ducklings and chicks are cuter than newly hatched robins is that they are actually older than robins when they hatch out! Most mother ducks and birds related to chickens nest on the ground, and lay a dozen or so eggs. If those babies hatched out helpless like robins, their calls and movements could quickly attract predators. It's much easier and safer for the female to quietly enter and leave the nest alone, and incubate for a few weeks longer, until the babies are strong enough to follow her out of the nest as soon as they hatch. It would be very difficult for a mother duck or chicken to find and bring enough food for so many babies all by herself, and male ducks and roosters simply don't know how to help care for babies. So upon hatching, ducklings and chicks, which are precocial species, immediately fluff out and follow their mother, who leads them to food and teaches them where to hide when danger approaches. They are well-developed enough to eat by themselves right from the start.

Songbirds are smaller than chickens and ducks, and mothers expend relatively more energy incubating their eggs. They have fewer babies in a brood, so it is easier for them to successfully feed their four or five babies than it would be for a mother duck or hen to feed a dozen (and most father songbirds, including robins, help with this task). It simply works better for them if their babies hatch while still very undeveloped. Birds with helpless young like this are altricial species.

Baby robins may be undeveloped, with very few feathers and bulging eyes at first, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Their parents think they're the most beautiful, wonderful babies in the world! And looking at them, you can learn a lot about birds. The first few days, you can see how enormous bird eyes actually are beneath their transparent skin and translucent skull. When their feathers grow in, we see only a tiny bit of those huge eyes.

Baby bird skin is clear enough to allow us to see some of their internal organs. You can see the greenish gall bladder (which holds bile produced in the liver to help them digest fat juicy worms!) the purplish-red liver, and the orange yolk-sac. As that grows smaller and the nestling grows bigger, you might notice some bright yellow areas here and there-those are fat deposits. Down feathers grow in fairly quickly to make the nestlings a little fluffy, so they can stay warm when their mother isn't incubating. Watch how their body feathers grow in. Each one appears to be a very tiny cylinder at first, like a tiny drinking straw, but that smooth outer case, called the "sheath," crumbles to allow the developing feather to open up. It takes only fourteen days or so for these tiny, unformed little creatures to grow a full body covering of feathers, with bright and sparkling eyes, able to hop and flutter their wings. Enjoy watching this amazing transformation!

Green Hour: Aviary!

We've been wanting to go to the Tracy Aviary for a little while and today we went! It was thrilling! It was exciting! It was a little cold, but it was a nice way to end our unit study on birds. We are diverting a bit from Barb's Green Hour challenge #8, that is why I'm not linking this week. But we are excited for challenge #9. We will be moving on to plants next week.





We saw so many different kinds of birds. This is just a small sampling of the many birds in the world. The variety is astounding! It's incredible for me to think that our Father in Heaven created all these to give variety to the earth. Just for us to marvel and wonder at.

Sam and Elise did a scavenger hunt while we were there. We looked for the different types of beaks to tell us what kind of food they eat. We looked at their feet to tell us where they lived. We admired their feathers and coloring.

One of our favorite birds was this Rainbow Lorikeet.
This Australian native loves to sip nectar.

The Black Swan, also native to Australia.

We have plenty of black and white magpies in our neighborhood,
but no green magpies.

California Condor. Yikes!

Golden Eagles

Is it a Scarlet Letter?
A Scarlet Pimpernel?
Scarlet O'Hara?
No! It's a Scarlet Ibis.

We were so impressed with the Bald Eagles.
So majestic, so stately.
Then we saw them tear into a dead rabbit.
(see it there right in front?)
That kind of put a damper on things.
Temminick's Targopan is more impressive
when it puffs out it's cheeks.

I love the Flamingos' colors.
"Eh mon, you want a piece of me?"

"'s all right?" "'s all right."

The wood duck was nearly extinct in the
late 19th and early 20th century.
Thanks to successful management procedures
there are well over a million wood ducks today.

The Peacocks were showing off today.
We were entranced by their beauty.

Oh yeah! Work it, work it.

Look at me flex, baby.

After all that showing off,
this is how impressed the ladies were:

This King Vulture kind of freaked us out.
His eyes were red.

We'll keep the Pelicans brief. Ah hem....

Seriously, we thought they were interesting.
K~ we wondered about those bumps on their beaks too.We loved learning about our fine feathered friends.