Black and White Birds

Another bird study from the Handbook of Nature Study Blog. This Outdoor Hour Challenge is on Woodpeckers, Chickadees, Nuthatches and Towhees.

For us, these are all common feeder birds. On our property we have a Pileated Woodpecker that we hear regularly and a Northern Flicker and a Downy that come to the suet feeder. We have both Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees that come. And we have Spotted Towhees and Red-breasted Nuthatches. The Nuthatches are my favorite because they look like they’re wearing sunglasses and they’re just so cute.

This first set of pictures were all taken a few months back at our feeder or close to it. They were all taken by my daughter.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Black-capped Chickadee

Spotted Towhee. Unfortunately, you cannot see the red eyes on this little guy. He’s got bright red eyes.

We have one special Spotted Towhee that comes each year and will eat out of my daughter’s hand. She’s been feeding it for three years. My husband also tricked it into thinking he was my daughter and got it to eat out of his hand once. When she started, we didn’t have the feeders up, so it’s more challenging now.

We also found a couple of birds from this challenge while we were out scouting away from home. We found a Mountain Chickadee in Bend, OR, while there. We found this Red-naped Sapsucker at Grandma’s house.

My daughter did two entries in her nature journal this week. Here is the one on the Black-capped Chickadee. Over the last several weeks, we have also been enjoying John James Audubon’s illustrations almost every day. So this is also her attempt at reproducing his Black-capped Chickadee painting.

Black-Capped Chickadee by Zippy (age 9)

My son didn’t want to do an illustration this time and I decided to let him off the hook; partly because I’m trying to foster a love of nature and nature journaling not make it a grueling.

This challenge also included learning about bird feet. Here is a simple webpage that we found about bird feet and it even has a fun activity that you can print off and do with your children. Natural HIstory Museum: Bird’s Feet.

I just have to say, and maybe I mentioned this before. We have the best videos on birds imaginable: The Life of Birds by David Attenborough. They are absolutely fantastic. Some of the segments can be watched on You Tube. If you love birds, you must have these videos. We’ve watched them so many times. I do have to give a disclaimer–They are evolutionist, but most of it is easy to skip. The videography is just outstanding. We’ve watched them so many times. This set was our first set by Attenborough that we ever had. They were a gift. Now we’ve been slowly collecting other videos by him, just because this set was so outstanding.