I have a list of about 30 birds I want my 7yo sons to know by sight and sound. We have not had any formal learning of birds yet but we are in nature a lot and they have picked up many through normal life. I’d like to take each bird, though, to focus on a week at a time to make sure they know the bird, its habits, calls, etc. I don’t think I need many resources for this. We have Sibley’s book already, access to bird calls on the internet (though someone did recommend a bird call CD here recently that interested me but I forgot to look up so will see if I can find that again). We haven’t read Burgess’s Bird book (currently reading his Animals book) and I haven’t been able to find a list of the birds discussed in that book. (The TOC just has Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc.) Does anyone know if the specific birds covered in the book are listed somewhere?
And if you know of a bird resource (we are covering the 30 most common here in NC) that is a must have, OR of a method you used to cover learning about birds that you thought really worked well, I’d love to hear of it.
Well, we didn’t go quite as indepth as you did, but we use the New York version and used the Virginia version when we were away on vacation. It has a short summary about the bird, what they eat, what their nest is like, etc. We’ve really enjoyed these books.
A couple of years ago, birds were the topic of our nature study, as well, and we discovered this fantastic website by Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/Page.aspx?pid=1189 It’s called All About Birds and has great bird guides, bird calls, and a bird cam. Right now they have a bird cam on a hawk’s nest with eggs that are about ready to hatch! We go there to identify birds quite frequently. That term of bird study really made little birders out of my kids. I’ve posted our most recent bird find on my blog — a nest of baby house finches built right outside our kitchen window. http://happilyoccupiedhomebodies.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/spring-is-here-and-so-are-the-baby-birds/ Enjoy your study!