I just have to share our exciting news! Our boys spent several months installing a Bird Garden in our side-yard. We were thrilled last spring when the project won first place in the Keep Our County Beautiful competition. That was quite an honor.

But we just heard that the county-wide organization submitted our project to the state level, and it won Second Place in the Keep Georgia Beautiful competition! We were shocked.

Thanks for letting me share our joy! You can read more about our Bird Garden project here. You can also find out more about how we got started with youth birding, including some of the techniques that Dawn (from Olive Plants blog) and I used to teach our boys, by reading this article about us on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website.

Here are my boys and Dawn’s boys at the Georgia Youth Birding Competition last spring.

Dawn has some excellent posts in her Birding 101 series, including Introduction to Birding, Know your Bird Parts, and Using a Field Guide.

The Lord has been showering us with blessing after blessing this week! My middle boys participate every year in the Georgia Youth Birding Competition, an event in which children fan out all over the state and see how many bird species they can spot and identify during a 24 hour period. They and their two teammates work hard all year, memorizing bird calls and field marks, in preparation for the competition each spring.

We woke up early Saturday morning to a very unusual sight! As if to wish us “Happy Birding”, this Pileated Woodpecker flew up to our deck and even perched on our window, allowing us an up close and personal look at this beautiful bird.

The organizers of this event go out of their way to make the children feel so special, as the event culminates in a banquet, a live bird of prey show and an award ceremony, in which the children are given wonderful prizes that help take them take their birding to the next level.

Our team won binoculars, field guides and spotting scopes at last year’s birding competition.

Although our team won their age division last year, we were not expecting a win this year, as our team of 1st-3rd graders was moving into a new age bracket. The older boys had to compete at the 3rd-5th grade level, and the younger boys did not want to split up from their brothers, so the entire team moved into the new age category.

The birding was hard this year, as very hot weather meant that there weren’t as many birds out and about. The children battled fatigue and discouragement, but they dug deep and persevered.

The boys managed to identify 73 birds during the 24 hour period, many spotted “by ear”, as they had memorized so many calls.

We were stunned–and humbled by God’s goodness–when the boys did win first place in their new age division, beating the 2nd place team by only two birds.

Team “Birds of a Feather” won their age group last year, as well. Their team name will be engraved on the plaque at the base of this trophy for the 2nd year in a row!

It was a great opportunity to encourage the boys that their hard work this year, their perseverance during hot weather, and the efforts of even the youngest team members paid off. Their margin of victory was so slim that every single find mattered, from the difficult to identify warblers to the easy to spot Northern cardinal.

The boys were just as thrilled to be proclaimed the overall winners for fundraising, having raised more money for conservation than any other team in the competition. They have a great desire to see bird habitat protected and restored, and the $500 they raised for the American Bird Conservancy will be used for that purpose.

My boys’ two teammates each won an award for their birding journals, as well. Needless to say, our team was on cloud nine!

My boys are the 1st and 3rd children in this photo. The other two boys have been their teammates for the past 3 years at the Georgia Youth Birding competition.

We were well aware throughout the competition that the boys could not rely on their own strength or their own skill to find birds. Many times we prayed to Jesus, asking him for help not only to find birds but also to work together in a way that brought glory to Him. Our verse for the weekend was Psalm 115:1, which says, “Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.”

As if this blessing weren’t enough, we arrived home to find a letter telling us that our Bird Garden project was selected as a winner in the Keep [our county] Beautiful contest! Truly, the Lord has poured out His love upon us this week.

We did experience some hilarious moments during the competition, as well. My friend Dawn wrote about one of them in her post Not Exactly What I had in Mind.

They decided to remedy the situation by putting in a bird garden. Their vision was to plant shrubs and trees which would restore lost habitat, giving the birds food and shelter. They also wanted to have a water feature, some seed and nectar feeders and a place to sit so they could enjoy watching their feathered friends once again.

We agreed to help them turn their vision into reality. When we began this project last March, our four boys ranged in age from 3 to 11 years old. After a few days of laborious digging just to plant some small flowers, I hired someone with a power auger to dig holes in our hard, rocky Georgia clay. They did in 5 hours what would have taken us 5 years: they dug 40 holes, many large enough for trees.

After the holes were dug, we never needed to hire another professional. This was a project the boys wanted to do, and my desire was to help them run with it. They had ownership over the project, and they were the driving force behind everything we did.

Here you can see the woods beside our home as it looked two years ago, before it was destroyed to make room for a new house.

This is our side yard today, with much habitat restored.
We began researching trees and shrubs that are attractive to birds. We wanted every plant to be attractive to songbirds for food, shelter, or both. Little by little over the course of the past year we worked to fill those 40 holes. The boys had lots of practice preparing root bound plants, mixing enriched soil and manure with our Georgia clay, and learning how to plant trees and shrubs. Having never done much gardening before, I learned right along with them.

We are finally almost finished with the Songbird Garden. Last week we dug up one more area ourselves and planted butterfly bushes, bridal wreath and lantana to make Hummingbird Hollow.

The boys enjoy watching the birds at the feeding station from this bench. Hummingbird Hollow is in the foreground. Several of the butterfly bushes were transplanted from another part of our yard.

We have two feeding stations in the garden: a seed station for songbirds (which a kind neighbor built for us) and a nectar station for hummingbirds.

The boys have spent hours upon hours digging up large rocks in our woodsy backyard and carrying them to the garden, one by one or in heavy wagon-loads, to use as edging around all the shrub and flower beds. This hard work was one of our favorite projects. They love the natural look that it gives to the garden, and I love the fact that it was all free!

We worked together as a family to lay 124 cubic feet of mulch, creating garden paths around the plantings. My oldest son taught me how to lay weed block and spread the mulch, as he has helped my husband do it in other areas around the house.

I don’t think we could have pulled this project off without the help of our oldest son. Now aged 12, he provided a lot of the brawn that was needed for this undertaking. He proved himself very capable at many of the jobs I find tedious. For example, this week he proudly assembled two bird baths.

He also hung a tree face that we received as a gift. I love it!

The younger boys wanted to provide the birds with a dust bath for cleaning their feathers, and with rock and brush piles for foraging.

Working together, the 3 youngest boys dug a large pit for the dust bath and mixed sifted ash, sand and dirt together in the hole. They lined it with stones and we’ve already seen doves enjoying it. The rock pile and brush pile have also taken shape.

Each boy worked with his grandfather to build a birdhouse suited to a particular species.

They have also hung out nesting materials, including a feather duster and a cage with natural unprocessed cotton fibers. A clipped string mop head, meant to attract orioles, adorns one of the trees.

We recently learned about worms in our science lessons and the boys decided to begin a worm farm in order to have rich compost for the bird garden. They have been enjoying that ongoing project very much!

We have seen our bird population grow over the past year, and it has been a delight to see new species coming to our yard. We were thrilled a couple of months ago to see our first pair of Rose Breasted Grosbeaks in the yard, and this week we have been serenaded regularly by an Eastern Meadowlark.

Even more beneficial has been the time spent working together to accomplish a common goal. The boys have learned a lot about gardening, and we all feel the satisfaction of a job well done. Each boy, regardless of his age, was a valued member of the team, and each one feels the thrill of taking dominion over one little corner of the earth. The two middle boys feel encouraged and uplifted that the family helped them run with their idea. They feel loved, and excited about their next big idea!

I asked one of our sons this week if he would remember this special project for the rest of his life. He is the bird-lover, and it had been his idea in the first place. He shared with me that when he had conceived the idea for a bird garden, he imagined a hummingbird feeder, a few plants and a rock bench. The final product was beyond his wildest imagination. He said that he never could forget it, as this has been the biggest undertaking of his young life.

For more specific information about what we planted and how we did this project, please refer to my Birding Blog. Here are links to the posts about our Bird Garden project.

The first post about Phase one of this project can be found at this link:
Our Bird Garden

This post is about some of the birds we began seeing about half way through this project:
Fruits of the Bird Garden

This is the most recent post that gives specifics about some of the things we planted, construction of the dust bath, and instructions for how we did the paths:
Finishing the Bird Garden

UPDATE:  The children were thrilled when this project won first place in the Keep Our County Beautiful competition.  And we were all completely stunned when it also won second place for the state of Georgia in the Keep Georgia Beautiful competition!!  You can read details about it here!

Spring 2008 and fall 2008 were mainly about planting. During Phase One we put many trees and shrubs into the ground, focusing on those that are known to provide shelter and food for a variety of birds. Our neighbor built us a lovely feeding station and we have enjoyed many hours watching birds at the platform feeder, on the suet and peanut feeders and on the mixed seed feeder.

My dad and I installed drip lines to water the plants. This enables me to water all the plants simultaneously with one turn of the hose, and it ensures that water goes all the way down to the roots. I love the drip line system!

Now we are in the final phase. The boys are working very diligently to finish this project, as they have a desire to enter it into a local arm of the Keep America Beautiful competition. This was their dream and their vision from the start, and they have worked hard to bring it to fruition. We have many feathered friends visiting daily now, and often we see or hear new species that haven’t come to our yard in the past. This phase, though, is about putting the finishing touches on to make this extra appealing to the birds, as well as making the garden attractive to humans. We want it to be a place that we will enjoy sitting in, as we watch the birds flitting from tree to tree or feeding on seeds.

Hummingbird Hollow
Up till now, all our plantings have focused on songbirds. Last week we dug up an area at one edge of the garden and planted lantana, spirea, and butterfly bushes. We also put some hummingbird feeders there. The boys have nicknamed this part of the garden Hummingbird Hollow.

The Dust Bath
The boys were keen to put in a dust bath. Birds like to “bathe” themselves in dust, and it helps their feathers. We’ve seen birds doing this before and wanted to build our own. The boys dug out a large hole this week, about 6 inches deep and about 2′ x 2′ square. They filled it with equal parts sifted ash, sand and dirt from the hole, and lined the edge with rocks. We placed a small feeder, low to the ground, to help draw the birds’ attention. This has been one of their favorite projects!

Brush pile and rock piles
Some birds like to forage in brush piles or under rocks for insects, so the boys constructed some of each.

Water features
The boys have dreamed of putting in a pond, but I have said that they can do that when they are all old enough to dig it and maintain it themselves. For now, we put up one birdbath near the house, and plan to put out another bird bath deeper in the garden soon.

They have also put out nesting materials, such as feathers, cut bits of string from a string mop and some unprocessed cotton fibers that are in a hanging cage (this was a gift that someone purchased for them at a birding specialty store).

Hummingbird Hollow
Up until now, all of our plant selections have focused on songbirds. We saved one small area of the garden for hummingbirds, and planted it this week. We put in some lantana, some butterfly bushes (including some which I transplanted from our butterfly garden in the back yard), some Bridal Wreath (spirea), and filled it out with several blueberry bushes for songbirds. We put another feeding station in hummingbird hollow: it is a tall pole with hooks on it, from which we’ve hung two hummingbird feeders.

More new plantings
We have several holly bushes, leyland cypress, Little Giant pines, Little Gem magnolias, crepe myrtle, snowball bushes, and other trees and shrubs already planted, but we still had a wish list of a few more. Last week we were able to get the blueberry bushes we wanted, as well as four tall, spiky grasses. I don’t know their name (I thought they were Pampas, but they don’t have the feathery top). These grasses grow several feet tall and some birds like to hide in them. We also planted a flowering cherry tree.

We put an order in at our local greenhouse for a Flowering Dogwood tree, a Washington Hawthorne, some weigela, and more spirea. Tomorrow we hope to fill the last four holes dug in spring 2008 if some of these trees and shrubs have come in. We have had some empty black planting buckets sitting in the holes over the past year to keep them from filling up too much with leaves and debris.

Final projects
We spent much of last week working on making the bird garden more functional and attractive for us. We put down groundcloth for weed protection in the flower beds (especially hummingbird hollow), and covered it all with mulch. The kids hauled what seemed to be literally tons of rock, gleaned from other places in our yard, and used it to line all the paths and beds throughout the garden. It was a big job, but fortunately (?) our soil has lots of small and large boulders. We even have some that are big enough to sit on, but we haven’t managed to get any of those over to the bird garden. All this rock didn’t seem fortunate when we were working on digging holes and planting, but it has saved us a lot of money and time on edging. The garden has a very natural, rustic look with all the rock, and we all feel a sense of pride that we did this ourselves with rock from our own property.

Building the Garden Path
Once we outlined the entire path and all the beds in rock it was time to mulch the path and all the flower beds. We purchased mulch in contrasting colors, mulching all the paths through the garden in red and the flower beds in brown cypress. We initially wanted to lay stepping stones but that proved too expensive. Using mulch was a cost effective and simple way to construct the garden path. My oldest son already knew how to lay down ground cloth and spread mulch, and we think the path turned out fantastic. It was easier and less expensive than many of the other alternatives we had considered.

We placed an old bench and a couple of children’s outdoor chairs in the garden, and we purchased a new bench that we have yet to put together.

Finishing Touches
This week is about taking care of all the finishing touches before the boys submit their project application on Wednesday.

Each of the boys built birdhouses with their grandpa, intended for drawing different kinds of birds to the garden. We got those hung today, and the boys were proud. They had a Bluebird house, a Chickadee house, and a Tufted Titmouse house which we hung. We have not hung their Purple Martin house yet as we are trying to figure out a way to get it high enough. I am thinking of drilling it to the top of our wooden swingset.

The boys also have named each part of the garden, and they want to construct small signs with names like “Hummingbird Hollow”, “Robin Road”, “Dove Dust Bath”, “Nuthatch Neighborhood”, and the like. Our oldest son plans to put small signs at the base of each tree with its English and scientific name. He had fun today hanging a Tree Face to give the garden some whimsical personality!

Although we won’t be using stepping stones throughout the garden paths, the boys each wanted to make one stepping stone out of concrete. We are studying Ancient Rome right now and they had the idea of doing a different bird mosaic on each of the stones and displaying them in the garden. I’ve never worked with concrete before, but I hope to complete that project with them in April. It won’t be in time for the competition, but I know it will be fun, and a great way for the boys to tie some of their history studies in with this big science project!

For more photos and details about what we did, see my past posts on this project:

Our Bird Garden

Fruits of the Bird Garden

Empowering Kids to Run with Their Ideas

There is a platform feeder with black oil sunflower seeds, a hanging nut feeder, a mixed seed feeder with a roof on top and a hummingbird feeder. Looking out the window right now I can see a ruby throated hummingbird, two cardinals, a chickadee, an Eastern Towhee and two mourning doves, each perched on a different feeder or eating seeds from the ground.

Our bird garden, now 4 months old, is the perfect spot for these birds to take cover, and the feeding station gets even more visitors thanks to its perfect spot. The Rose Breasted Grosbeaks have continued to come back daily, along with mockingbirds and our other usual visitors. In fact, today we had two male Rose breasted Grosbeaks as well as the female. We’ve seen two woodpeckers this week as well, in or near the bird garden (not at the feeding station).

Tonight K and I heard a cerulean warbler and a hooded warbler in a wooded area down the street, but we could never spot either one.

Now that the weather has cooled, we are ready for phase two of our bird garden project. There are still several holes (dug in the spring) awaiting trees or shrubs, and we want to put a gravel path and some benches in, as well as a water feature. There is some discrepancy about that, as I want a simple bird bath whereas the boys want to dig a pond! I think birdbath will win out, and they can put a pond in later, when they are big enough to dig it and maintain it themselves!

The boys each built a birdhouse, aimed at attracting a particular bird, with the help of their grandfather. We have a purple martin house, a towhee house and a finch house. I hope to get those put up in the bird garden this month, as well.

I had also planned to transplant several butterfly bushes, but it looks like I may not need to. I can see where it looks like some have come up on their own, probably spreading from the butterfly garden in the backyard.

Once some of the brush was cleared, we started getting the garden laid out. We saved several stands of tall trees, including some dead ones. The woodpeckers love the dead trees, so we didn’t take down any dead trees at all, other than one which was threatening to fall on the house.

We hired someone with a power auger to drill holes in our tough, rocky Georgia soil. They dug 40 holes, and we are in the process of digging about 20 more small ones. We have purchased lots of trees and shrubs which birds love, as well as transplanting several from my mom’s property and our own.

So far, the boys and I have put in 5 Little Gym magnolia trees, two holly bushes, two crape myrtle, several pines (Leyland Cypress and Little Giants), some tiger lilies, hydrangeas, Nandina, and snowball bushes. We have some Rose of Sharon and 3 southern magnolias which we plan to put in the ground today.

We are working on weeding our existing butterfly garden. Once that is done, we plan to transplant several of our butterfly bushes to the outer edges of the bird garden, turning that area into two separate hummingbird gardens. The tiger liles are there already, and our kind neighbor built us a lovely feeding station which holds 3 bird feeders.

Right now we have out a screen feeder with black oil sunflower seeds, a covered feeder with a seed mix, and a peanut feeder. Soon we will put a safflower feeder and a humming bird feeder in that area, as well.

Each of the boys has built a birdhouse to attract a certain type of bird. Their Papa helped them do that to meet specific criteria needed by each species. We plan to put those in this area, too, as well as some additional feeders, one or two birdbaths, a bench, and an arbor for climbing vines.

My dad and I spent a couple of days putting in a drip irrigation system. This is an inexpensive set of lines that run from the hose to each plant, allowing each one to get a deep watering by turning on just one hose. This is important in our drought-ridden climate. We have heavy watering restrictions, and it isn’t good conservation to waste tons of water doing each plant individually with a gushing hose. Installing the lines wasn’t as hard as I feared it would be, and it is much cheaper than an in-ground system.

I have ordered two more hollies, and I still have several holes to fill. I plan to get some flowering dogwoods, which I love. They do well in this climate and the birds like them. Other than that, I am not sure what to fill the other holes with, so I am taking some time to pore over all my bird garden books, including the newest one, Attracting Birds to Southern Gardens.

I am a relatively new birder and a very novice gardener. Books like this one help me to think through the complicated process of choosing plants which will attract certain birds, be well situated to our climate, tolerate a largely “hands off” approach (which is what this garden will be once school starts up again), provide for both nesting and food needs, and other factors. With a limited amount of space and money for this project, we need every plant to “count”.

Today was the first time we have started to see the fruits of our labors. We began this project about 3 weeks ago and the birds are starting to find the trees and feeding station. We had several cardinals, a tufted titmouse and a mockingbird on our feeding trays this morning. We also saw some chipping sparrows on the ground around it, an Eastern Phoebe in one of the trees, an American crow, and two squirrels climbing up one of the magnolias. As I am typing this, I can hear a Carolina wren, and we hear Eastern Towhees now, too. I trust that as we plant more trees and put out food and water stations we will begin to see and hear much more. I’m looking forward to “phase two” of this plan, when we will begin attracting hummingbirds, as well.

This has been a wonderful project to do with my boys. We ended our school year at the beginning of May. We set aside one month to do Phases 1 and 2 of this project. It would have been impossible if we had done all the heavy labor of clearing the brush and drilling the holes ourselves. But with that work done, we should have all the trees and shrubs (over 60 including the saplings and transplants from my mom’s extensive garden and our own butterfly garden out back) in the ground within the month’s time frame. Phase 1 was getting everything prepared and getting the bird garden plants in. Phase 2 will be transplanting everything needed for the hummingbird garden from our butterfly garden out back.

Phase 3 will probably be done when the weather cools off in the fall. We have plans to put in a gravel path, get the bench and arbor into the garden, lay down a pad of pavers for a bird bath station, and put in some railroad ties and pavers to make a path for the boys down a hill which is unsuitable for planting but needs some erosion control measures.

The best thing about this garden has been doing it with the boys. My husband’s back is bad, so he hasn’t helped at all. My boys are 11, 8, 6 and 3 and each one of them has had a significant hand in digging holes, filling them with dirt, pulling weeds, and choosing plants. We are enjoying this time together, bringing our dream to fruition. This is “conservation in action”, a very valuable lesson for my boys and something we will always remember doing. We can’t do much on any given day, but we chip away at accomplishing our goal, little by little.

I know 10 years from now, as we sit on our bench under the arbor, watching many species of birds enjoying this lovely garden, we will look back and remember our our “day of small things” with fondness.