Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Outdoor Hour, Challenge 3


Challenge #3, click here to see the Mother Ship.

Well, we learned several things in today's nature walk.

Since we are WIMPY southerners, we don't take nature walks when it is below 35 degrees and the wind is from the north.  We just can't handle it.  Our walk was 5 minutes long at our local walking track that goes by a river and through a little wood.

However, on our teeny, tiny walk, we did identify an American Coot.  We have never seen one before.  For ya'll that go to the Walking Track, here is what one looks like.  I did NOT take this picture since my fingers were numb with the cold.  You have to remember that this was the THIRD day in the row we had snow flurries!



The other wildlife we saw was a squirrel.  This is fairly exciting for my brood, since we never have squirrels in our tree-less yard.

The most exciting thing for the day was to realize that the winter birds are here!  We did find out the American Coot comes here to hang out for the winter, but I also identified a Chipping Sparrow hopping into our B-B-que grill today.  I HEARD a Field Sparrow, too.  All three of these birds have not been here through the fall.    Additionally, Kae-Kae saw a Bluebird and American Goldfinch whose yellow has not entirely faded yet. 

So, this proves that the birds are more active in snow flurries than our family!

For Challenge #3, we were actually supposed to document in a Nature Journal what we saw or heard.  We have done that the last 2 times, so we opted out today.  Our hope was to be able to find something we could put in our journal that we did not actually draw, such as a taping a leaf, doing a leaf rubbing, etc.  That will have to happen next week.  The only sound we heard besides our chattering teeth was a bubbling brook, amid all the traffic sounds on the highway.

Heather

4 comments:

  1. A+ for getting outdoors even for a short period of time for this challenge. I was thinking as I read your entry that you might want to keep a bird list...prequel to the collection challenge. Just casually start a running list of birds and the dates and then your children will begin to see a cycle of birds in your area. You could even just list them in a calendar square as you find the time.

    I think squirrels are fun to watch. What kind do you have red or gray squirrels?

    Thanks for sharing your study and your link with the OHC.

    Don't forget to submit this one to the OHC Blog Carnival.
    http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_9182.html

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  2. You're doing a great job with these! I'm proud of your bird id's, too! WooHoo!

    We did the GBBC last year in the snow, really rare for us even whimpier deeper south southerners. We couldn't believe how many birds we counted just driving around our community (we never exited the car-lol).

    I've been wanting to do the OHC for a couple years now. I think I'm inspired to start come January.

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  3. Oh, GOODIE Dawn. I will love to have you do it with us!!! Thanks for reading!

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  4. Barbara- we have grey squirrels with bushy tails:) I am going to keep the bird list on a calendar square, that is so easy I can even manage that. Thanks for visiting!

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