Thanks for stopping by, Annie.

Wow, you are really having some up close nature encounters – a little of the dark side of nature. 🙂 I’m sure your nature sketchbooks are awesome; you all are so artistic.

I wouldn’t know a mocking bird if I heard one but that is one bird I would like to see since it seems to be quite “talented”.

I have never heard of it, but I shall surely look for it. I wanted to share one more idea: Nests. There are all different kinds of nests, mud cups, grass, sticks and feathers, messy stacks of twigs, cavity nesters, cradles….it’s really fun to try collect a whole bunch of different kinds. Chipping sparrows use horse hair. If you put strands of ribbon or something, robins will weave that into their mud cup. Red-winged blackbirds make a cradle from one reed to another by the pond, and house wrens will just make a messy stack of twigs inside a cavity. One last thing about wrens; Mr. Wren goes around and drops twigs in several potential homes and then Mrs. Wren decides which one she likes best. When my dad and I were making nesting boxes, some had natural holes in the wood besides the entrance hole we had drilled, and we would joke that Mrs. Wren would like the extra picture window. I will stop commenting now. It has been fun.

Wow, Carmen, what a great way to utilize those frozen specimen’s. 🙂 Hands on experience for sure.

Have you ever heard of the book The Burgess Bird Book for Children? It’s all about birds for children but told in story form.

We went recently to hear a man talk and slide show of a bird watching trip he had made to Brazil. We all came away realizing how passionate people can be about this hobby. I had no idea.

I’m finding that the birds are starting to go through the birdseed faster and faster. Cowbirds are our latest sighting.

Good to hear from you. xoxox

My “big” kids don’t keep lists anymore,but they each have kept their own yearly Sask. checklists. They would start a new one each year. Seth is writing down his “new finds” this year. I believe the Peterson guide is good as well, and not that there’s anything wrong with Audubon, but having pic and info together is nice and I have found that it’s easier to identify from the drawings in NG as opposed to Audubon’s photos. But, that’s just me. As far as the birds in the freezer go, I actually used them for a little class this spring. We had built some nesting boxes with my dad and some other children and then we had a “bird class”. When a bird would hit our window or something I would put it in the freezer and over the years I ended up with a decent collection of different kinds. We could see the difference in beaks, eye rings and other details that make it easier to identify a bird. It was fun with the little kids that came; making stories about Mr. and Mrs. Crossbill or whoever the dead specimens were. We are hoping to attract bluebirds, but more than likely we will get tree swallows in our boxes. If you have lots of boxes (or a few) you can number them, check their nests and eggs every day and keep a record of what’s happening. And yes, I remember Russell’s sisters laughing at my bag of freezer birds. But they have finally come in handy.