Cardinal

Cardinals: red, brown, and sometimes, vary rarely, yellow.
You mite see a male cardinal in a goldfinch nest by the young goldfinches, he is not baby siting, he caught too much and doesn't want to throw it away.  They will also feed baby jays (not by the parents!) and even other cardinals. (once again, the parents don't see)

The male cardinals are red, red, red, with a black face and a larger crest then females and have a baseball team. (sorry I like jokes, I'm talking about the team called the cardinals. . .)

Okay, most cardinals are red, but some yellow cardinals are out there, males that are yellow, thats all they are, they are vary rare, they are not endangered, they are different in the sense that you can be born with one arm or leg, the same thing happened.

Now, females are fawn-brownish, and clearly not as brightly colored as her mate, but thats good, because, think of a male bird of paradise siting on a nest, easy to see. To her, if she wants to hide, she flies to a tree, and she's gone.

By A, age 10

(all pictures credit to google image search)

Identifying Birds

Before we can identify a bird we have to have the words to describe what we're seeing.

Z's been learning about birds and this is what she has to say about identifying them:

     For instance if you see a Chickadee they will have a black stripe on their head, other birds have black stripes on their wings, you have to know where the stripe is on the bird to identify the bird.

     Knowing the words for the body parts is important. A cardinal has a crest on his crown whereas robins do not but they both have red on them. A robin has a red breast but cardinals are red everywhere.

     If you're looking up to find out what bird you see every bit of information helps.

Picture from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Woodpecker

From the words of a kindergartner, with my questions edited out.

We have a woodpecker in our yard.  I know it's a woodpecker because it has a red spot on the back of it's head and stripes on the wings.  Most of it is black and white, but it has a little bit of red. It has a little beak, a beak is a bird mouth and it is hard.

I know about woodpeckers because I have my own stuffed woodpecker and the one in my yard looks the same.


From the middle-schooler.
Woodpeckers have spongy skulls around their brain to protect them from concussions.


From the adult:
The woodpecker we have hanging around is a male Downy Woodpecker.  He is right at home in the mixed flock of chickadees, robins, sparrows, and juncos that live in the backyard.  Aside from the robins they're all small birds, about six inches or less - approximately half the size of the stuffed one below. He eats mostly from the birch tree but also enjoys the suet block.

Updates Soon

This blog was started as a project nearly 10 years ago in order for me to learn about my new surroundings.  I lost track of that project once life got more busy in Texas, and eventually we moved back to the Midwest.

Now I have several curious little minds who love the outdoors and ask questions like: "why do trees look different?" "what kind of bird is that?" "what is that plant?".  The idea is to work together and learn new things.  What a kindergartner will learn might be a bit basic for a middle school kid, but what an elementary age child might learn would amaze a toddler.  Each of us will be able to write and post what we have seen, observations we've made, and species we've identified.

There will be no strict update schedule, but because we're all in this together hopefully it will be much sooner than nine and a half years before another post shows up.