Sunday, 29 December 2019

Big Bird Watch

The last weekend in January (25th to 27th) is the Big Garden Birdwatch run every year by the RSPB. If you visit the RSPB website, you'll find lots of free downloadable educational resources on the schools page including survey sheets for different abilities, bird feeder recipes, crafts, games and printables. All well worth a look at, especially if you have primary age children. You'll find different information on the Big Garden Birdwatch page itself. 🐦

I love national surveys that anyone can take part in. They're such a great way for families to engage with nature in a meaningful way, regardless of age and ability. In fact, I've found that working together as a family often means that my children are more keen to get involved, at least during the primary years. I'm afraid teenagers can be a little more difficult to convince, at least in my house. Although, I tend to find that if I start doing activities like this by myself, Boykin will at least pop along and lend a hand, even if only for few minutes and he's usually interested in the results. 😊

We're quite lucky in that we get a variety of birds in our garden throughout the year, although at the minute, I only ever seem to see the robin. In the summer, we've had woodpeckers, collared doves, magpies, jays, various tits and finches, magpies, blackbirds and once, I even saw a peregrine falcon.


The RSPB has a lot of useful information on their website about bird watching and what kit you need.There are pages for identifying birds that even have sound clips of birdsong and maps of
 distribution.

There are bird related activities in the following Picture Book Explorers, if you want to take your studies a little further:
Granny Sarah & the Last Red Kite - learn about red kites;
Katie Morag & the New Pier - learn about sea ducks;
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-duck - learn about ducks;
Black Dog - learn about garden birds.

Of course, each of these packs has a lot more to learn about than just birds and Black Dog is particularly good for this time of year, being set on a snowy day.



My favourite non-fiction books about birds include:



What are your favourite books about birds? Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction? I'd love to know. Please drop me a line or pop along to the Facebook group to join in the conversation

If you liked this post, make sure you never miss another


Sign up to the BOW email list to receive
the latest information, best prices and exclusive subscriber-only discounts 


No comments:

Post a Comment