Birding 101: Sketching Birds

Once the boys learned the basics, mastered binocular usage, and found their friend, the camera, they caught the birding bug BIG TIME!

Bird watching was something we did wherever we went...while eating a picnic lunch, while waiting in line at the drive-thru, even while riding in the car!

And birds started showing up all around my house in the form of art work!  Around here, getting a sketch of a ruby-throated hummingbird means you are really loved!!

It was not long until our classroom turned into a bird-printing studio, and there is just so much room on the fridge for these kinds of pictures.  And ALL of the pictures had to be displayed as not to hurt any one's feelings (or as the boys pointed out, the birds' feelings were fragile, too).

So I bought each boy a spiral art journal and kept them on a desk under the classroom window.  I had the desk stocked with colored pencils, a sharpener, regular no. 2 pencils, and erasers.  From this spot they could easily see our feeders and keep a log of many of the birds that visited us each day.

They drew pictures of which birds they identified
in the time they watched
and labeled each bird.
I also had them write a short sentence
about each scene.

Sometimes they would notice other birds
at places other than the feeder.
Their journal page had to depict
where the birds were seen.

Sometimes they saw birds in trees.
Notice they noted details like seeing two nests.

Other times birds would show up at interesting locations
like on my car.
This particular female cardinal
hovered around my car's side mirrors
all day!
We called her our pet bird!!

Carolina wrens nested behind our shed,
and we would see them hopping
around it all day.

In this entry, Wilbur drew a black vulture,
but he also wrote a list of the other birds
he saw that day.
He also included "honk, honk"
because he heard a Canada Goose
but did not see it.

On this page,
Orville did a good job sketching
the Downy's behavior.
He also included the date
of his entry.

On some pages of their journals,
the boys made notes of
mnemonics they used to memorize
birds songs.

Orville shares three of his favorite birds and their mnemonics
on this page.
The Hooded Warbler says, "I've a little, pretty hood."
The Killdeer says, "Hot Pockets."
The Red-winged Black Bird says, "Oh my red wing!"

Wilbur wants everyone to know
that the Indigo Bunting says,
"I am Mommy's favorite bird,
yes, I am!"
I will write more about mnemonics
in a future post.

We also included other "special" pages...

...like graphs of how many of each bird
were seen over a set period of time.

and instructional pages
like the one pictured above that Wilbur drew
to show the differences between
an American Crow and a Raven.

It seemed that drawing birds increased the boys love

for the great outdoors and for their feathered friends.

Their abilities as artists grew, too.

Two years later,
Wilbur painted this Ruby-throated Hummingbird
and won 4th place in a Crayola contest!

They loved these assignments, too!

Don't just take my word on that.

You can read what Orville has to say about sketching birds here

and what Wilbur thinks here!

Want to get started

Drawing with Your Children-

Nature Style?

Join B4L's very own Heather

for a weekly meme!

Barb, the Harmony Art Mom, has compiled a great set of lesson plans to be used with the book Drawing with Children.  This book follows a teaching structure very similar to the one I used with my boys when completing the journals pictured in this post.  I highly recommend it to you!  Her plans will tie in with Heather's meme, too, so your children will have a format for sharing their work.  I hope you will join the sketching and nature fun!



Join me next time when I will tweet about the mnemonics I mentioned earlier in this post!

Until we tweet again...
Dawn

Birding 101: The camera is your friend.

In our early days of bird watching,

we played games to learn to use binoculars with ease.

However, birds are movers and shakers!  We do not always get the time to watch a bird for as long as we need to make an accurate identification.

Sometimes, even when we get a good, long look at a bird, there still is not enough time to take in all the details.  The differences between some birds, particularly sparrows, are minute and challenge even seasoned bird watchers.

Can you tell which birds are at this feeder?

It did not take long for me to realize that the camera is our friend!

While the boys would look through binocs, I would look through the lens of my camera and snap as many shots as possible.  If time allowed, I would switch to the video camera and record the bird in action.  This allowed us to notice more about the bird's movements and habitat, an important part of nature study.

Even if you can't get in close enough with your camera
to get a crystal-clear view...

...you can zoom in even closer
with your photo editor,
giving you the view you need
to make a positive i.d.

At the end of each birding outing, we would sit down in a shady spot or return home and look through my photo journal of the day.  It was very  easy to notice details in the photos and match our pictures to the pictures in our field guides.

The best part was that the birds we identified this way became cemented in our visual memories.  Soon we could identify a large number of birds without the assistance of a field guide.  We often double check, just to be sure!  However, the camera has been our best teacher.

You can email pictures of birds
to birding friends for confirmation, too.
Two heads are always better than one.
Heather and I regularly email pictures to each other.
At least I do, when I have a working camera!
I borrowed all the pictures in this post from her.
Thanks Heather!

After the boys had seen several close-up shots of all those pretty bird details, they wanted to create sketches of their own!  Next time I will tweet about how we incorporated bird sketching into our school day!

Until we tweet again...

Dawn, for the Olive Plants

Birding 101: Using Binoculars

After the boys gained a little knowledge and experienced the fun of identifying the birds which are common to our region, they needed training on how to use binoculars.

Using binocs was challenging for both boys at first but particularly for Orville.  He is legally blind in one eye and wears progressive bifocals.  He cannot see anything more than a distorted, fuzzy jumble of colors without his glasses, and he found using binocs to be very challenging, particularly inexpensive beginner binocs.

I am forever thankful for my friend Molly who did some research and found these Leupold binoculars with lens pieces that easily twist into place for use with glasses.



You don't necessarily need a $100 pair of binoculars for every child in your family who wants to bird watch and whether or not a child is ready to properly care for an expensive piece of equipment has to be determined by each family.  However, I do recommend that you ditch the inexpensive beginner binocs as soon as you can.  At least have one pair of good binocs that can be shared.  It really enhances the bird watching experience and alleviates frustration when trying to identify a new bird.

Once we found binoculars that worked for us, there was still some training to be done.  It takes practice to be able to find a bird and bring it in to focus. 

We use these steps:

1. Find the bird without binoculars first. 
2. Take note of any features of its surroundings that might help you find it if you "lose your place", like clumps of leaves or a curve in the tree.
3. Once the bird is in your line of sight, move the binoculars to your eyes without moving your head.
4. If you do not immediately see the bird, move your binoculars slowly and with small movements to the left, then to the right, then up, then down, until you find it.  Look for your "landmark" along the way.
5. Once you find the bird, use your dominate pointer finger to adjust the focus knob until you have a clear view.

Sounds easy, right?  Not really.  And it takes practice.  Here are a few fun activities we did to gain experience....



Hide Easter eggs around your backyard or at a local playground.

Place them in a variety of locations, some easy to spot...

...and others a little more difficult.

Have your children find them using their binoculars
and describe the color of egg and its location
 to a sibling, friend or you.

You can make this game as easy or difficult as you like, increasing the difficulty as your children's skills advance.  Eventually, I drew stripes, dots and other "field marks" onto our eggs so that the boys would learn to take notice of more than one attribute.  Other times, I would hide several eggs but pick a "golden egg".  They had to meet the challenge of finding the blue egg with green dots and purple stripes, for example.

We also went to this spot,
one of the most beautiful look-outs in our state,
to play a game of I Spy.

Each of us would take turns saying,
"I spy with my little BI-noculars
a white roof."
Do you see the barn with the white roof, too?
It is easy to find with binocs!

Soon they would play without me.
It was a fun brother game
in which they were very motivated
to challenge each other!

Even though these games increased their binocular-using skills, sometimes binoculars just weren't enough.  Join me next time when I will tweet about cameras!  They are a bird watcher's friend!

Until we tweet again...
Dawn