We started out on Friday night at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. I had never been there before, but scouting reports made the area sound promising and we wanted to try something different than our usual haunts. We arrived about an hour before the start of the competition to try and scope out the terrain, but after bathroom breaks, and figuring out how to pay for parking, getting scopes together, etc. we didn’t have much time to spare before it was time to begin.

The evening was beautiful and the walk along the river was very pleasant, but the birds were harder to come by than we had hoped. There were plenty of people walking and jogging, pushing babies or being pulled along by large dogs. We tried to get off the beaten path when we could but it wasn’t easy to avoid people, so birding by ear was almost impossible. They managed to pick up about 20 species during the 2 1/2 hours we spent there. Highlights included seeing 3 Great Blue Herons on their nests in a tall tree. After the kids identified them they enjoyed watching them in the scope.

CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER NATIONAL RECREATION AREA:
(in order of the checklist, not in order of when we saw them)

1. Canada Goose

2. Mallard (one swam up very close to the overlook where we stood and the kids watched it for a long time)

3. Great Blue Heron (there were 3 of them, flying back and forth from the water and then up to a tall tree to perch in their nests. It was fun to see so many).

4. Double-crested Cormorant (seen perching in the water at the same spot where we viewed the GB Heron nest, the Mallard, and many Northern Rough Winged Swallows, and watched for a long time through the scope before the kids could ID it.) We have seen them so many times at our favorite birding spot but out of that regular context they struggled. A boy on our team (“I”) finally remembered after looking carefully through his guide and then everyone was surprised that they hadn’t recognized it sooner.

5. Northern Rough-winged Swallows (So many were flitting around near the overlook where we stood watching the GB Herons).

6. Black Vulture (seen flying, Identified by the white wingtips in flight)

7. Rusty Blackbird (a rarity but several had been seen at Ch.R. earlier in the week, identified with a field guide)

8. Blue Jay (seen up close in the tree overhead)

9. Tree Swallows (seen flitting over the water)

10. Hairy Woodpecker (identified by the call)

11.Northern Mockingbird

12. Eastern Bluebird

13. Tufted Titmouse

14. Northern Cardinal

15. Red-headed woodpecker (heard calling, also seen the next day at Kennesaw Mountain)

16. Brown-headed Cowbird

17. Eastern Towhee (heard and seen)

18. Fish Crow (heard and seen near the Mallards at the overlook, perching on small rock islands in the water)

19. Bank Swallow (seen among the other swallows, differentiated from the N. Rough Winged by their necks)

CHEATHAM HILL (NEAR THE BASE OF KENNESAW MOUNTAIN NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD)

After Chattahoochee River NRA we headed to the base of Kennesaw Mountain, and walked around at Cheatham Hill for a bit. We didn’t see too much there that we hadn’t already seen but added another 7 species to bring their total for the night to 26.

20. Mourning doves, spotted on the wire as we were driving

21. Turkey Vultures, we pulled over to a parking lot to see them, they were identified in flight by the white underneath their wings

22. Red-bellied Woodpecker (heard calling)

23. Brown-Headed Nuthatch seen on the side of a tall tree in the woods, also heard calling

24. Great Horned Owl heard calling in the distance

25. Chipping Sparrow found on the edge of the field in the grass. We saw another one under the tree near the parking lot.

We also saw another Eastern Bluebird on the fence post as we were leaving.

The next day we were up bright and early, having arranged to meet at 5:30-ish at the mall parking lot). We arrived at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield shortly after dawn and began birding the parking lot and lower field before heading up the mountain. We got some birds in the lower level but the most spectacular sightings of the day happened while hiking up the mountain. The kids were chilly and needed to grab breakfast snacks after we got out of the car, but quickly began birding as we were seeing and hearing birds everywhere. Birding by ear was tricky because there were SO MANY birds calling, so they really had to concentrate in order to isolate one from another.

KENNESAW MOUNTAIN NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD

26. Brown Thrasher (seen and heard many times)

27. American Robin (these were everywhere near the visitors center)

28. Eastern Phoebe (spotted in a tree above the parking lot)

29. Song Sparrow (seen in the grass, first identified as a tree sparrow but then they changed their mind after more carefully looking at their bird guides)

30. Carolina Chickadee

31. White Eyed Virio (identified by sound in the woods near the lower picnic area below the parking lot)

32. Yellow Warbler (sound)

33. Chestnut sided warbler (sound)

34. Red-tailed Hawk (this was one of the day’s highlights, as it swooped down right in front of us to catch a chipmunk in the woods right by where we were standing. The kids were so excited!!

35. Pine Warbler (sound)

36. Ovenbird (sound)

37. Black-throated Blue (sound)

38. Rose-breasted Grosbeak (we had a very clear view of it in the tree above us. I tried to scope it after the kids had identified it with binoculars, but we were too close to focus the scope)

39. Scarlet Tanager (a yellow female, in the same tree as the Rose-breasted Grosbeak)

40. Baltimore Oriole (seen perching and flitting around in the tree beside the Rose-breasted Grosbeak’s tree. There were two, a male and a female). By the time we had seen these 3 birds within about 3 minutes of each other, the kids were getting very excited and I felt that Kennesaw Mountain would be a successful location for them to see several new birds. We were flying high at that point and excited to keep moving!

41. Carolina Wren (seen in a tree overhead)

42. Black-throated Green (heard)

43. Hooded Warbler (heard and seen through binoculars)

The kids saw the red-headed Woodpecker which they had identified by call yesterday

44. Indigo Bunting (we saw a few, perching in some dead trees on the left side of the road near the top. This was another highlight)

We took the bus down as we needed to get to EL Huie in time to see what we could before they closed at 1:00. We got to EL Huie about 11:15, and I feared it wasn’t enough time. In retrospect I wish we had climbed the rest of the way to the top of Kennesaw Mountain and looked at the parking lot at the top, as I think that would have yielded more birds and we had more than enough time at EL Huie to see what was there.

E.L. HUIE WATER TREATMENT FACILITY IN HAMPTON, GA

45. Rock Pigeon

46. European Starling

47. Barn Swallow (the swallows were everywhere, and so close we almost felt we could reach out and touch them. There were so many beautiful Tree Swallows perching everywhere here)

48. Red-winged Blackbird (heard and seen)

49. Solitary Sandpiper (seen through binoculars and scope, there were several)

50. Lesser Yellowlegs (kids could easily have confused it with the Sandpiper as they have a similar back but the yellow legs gave it away)

51. Cliff Swallow (seen near one of the short bridge overlooks)

52. Wood Duck

53. Purple Martin clearly seen on the wires and on top of their houses

We left EL Huie and headed to Newman Wetlands, just a few minutes away. As we were driving two wild turkeys ran across the road right in front of us. There’s a bird! The kids were so thrilled and excited.

54. Wild Turkey

NEWMAN WETLANDS

55. Ruby-throated Hummingbird

56. Eastern Kingbird (at first identified as Eastern Phoebe but later they were looking through the field guide and realized their mistake. They already had an Eastern Phoebe and I didn’t say anything but the other chaperone and I had both seen the Kingbird and knew they had gotten it wrong the first time. I was glad they figured it out later when looking at their guide, all on their own).

57. Pileated Woodpecker (heard calling)

58. Great-crested Flycatcher

59. Red eyed Vireo (identified by call)

60. Blue headed Vireo (identified by call)

SHAMROCK BLACKLOCK LAKE

61. Summer Tanager (seen in a tree)

62. Red-shouldered Hawk seen over the lake

63. Bald Eagle (seen soaring over the lake). All our teams were regrouping when the Eagle appeared, having been separated the entire day. They all started whooping and hollering and it was such an incredible moment–we were at our last stop of the competition and they all saw a Bald Eagle at the same time. It was very momentous and I got goosebumps and felt so much gratitude to God for such a wonderful weekend with amazing kids.

64. American Crow (identified on the trip back to Charlie Elliott finish line)

At the awards banquet the kids won a book about drawing birds for their fundraising and new binoculars for winning their division. Our daughter was also overwhelmed and deeply moved to find out that she had won first prize for her painting of an Indigo Bunting in the birder-artist category (the participants in this competition had to submit bird artwork and be on a birding team).

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.

We enjoy all kinds of nature study, but we have a real love of birds. Two of my children are featured on Cornell Ornithology’s Celebrate Urban Birds website, and you can find out more about some of the things we have done in teaching these avid and accomplished birders in my post How we got started in Youth Birding.

It has been very fun to take an element of nature study and run with it to the point that I trust it will be a lifelong passion for my boys. I’m excited to share with you some of the resources we have found helpful for this kind of focused nature study on birds.

We first became interested in birds when reading Jeannie Fulbright’s Young Explorers Apologia Science Volume 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. This is the first book in an excellent science series for children. We’ve used several books in this series and the children have loved every one of them. There are many colorful pictures, informative text, a Christian creationist worldview, simple experiments with available household items, opportunities for keeping a nature journal, and narration prompts to help children tell what they’ve learned. I cannot recommend this series highly enough for the Kindergarten-6th grade homeschool science class. Even our preschoolers have enjoyed listening to these books.

These videos, designed to help kids get started with the basics of birdwatching, are excellent.   Kids will learn things like how to identify birds through field marks, size, shape, color, and other cues.

In past years we have kept a generalized Nature Notebook. On walks outside, we might find a flower to press or a bug to study and write about. This year, though, my two elementary-aged boys have kept a Nature Notebook specifically about birds. In it, they draw birds that they’ve seen at the feeder, along with making some notes about what they saw and when. They also include drawings of birds they would like to see…most birders keep a life list, but my boys also keep a “wish list”.
We have really enjoyed the North American Birds set from Notebooking Pages to help us in this endeavor. The best thing about this set is that it provides coloring pages for many common birds, along with space to record their English and Latin names, lines for jotting notes about the bird, and blank range maps that allow my kids to research and then record each bird’s winter and summer range.

Les Beletsky has three books that include bird song recordings from Cornell Ornithology’s extensive recording library. His book Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song was our first introduction to learning bird songs, and it has added such joy to our birding! Each bird in the book is numbered, and you can select that bird’s number on a small digital player that is attached to the book to hear its call. Now we often hear a bird and instantly know what is singing in our trees, even if we can’t see it.

My children enjoyed listening to bird songs so much that I got them a set of Birding by Ear tapes, and eventually we also purchased its sequel More Birding By Ear. In these CDs, a narrator introduces the listener to different birds, playing their call and teaching a mnemonic device to help with remembering the call. This is not a set for the typical child. A child who really likes birds may enjoy this, but it is made for adults. My children found the narrator’s voice very soothing, and they listened to these CDs while falling asleep every night for about a year!

We’ve made great use of a handheld device called The Identiflier, which you can load with a card featuring 10 bird calls. My kids have used this device and its cards to learn over 100 bird calls. The Identiflier is now available in an even more convenient form. You can purchase it as a small book and laser pen set. The laser pen reads a barcode in the book and plays the bird’s song, eliminating the need to carry dozens of song cards in the field.

The most useful tool I’ve found for my youngest children are the Audubon Plush birds.
My children have been collecting these little stuffed birds, which play authentic bird calls, for several years. I recently tested my 6 year old to see which birds he could name by sight or call. He recognized dozens of birds by both sight and call, and they are all birds that he has learned to recognize through playing with their Audubon plush birds. Even my four year old knows several unusual birds by sounds and sight because of his play with the Audubon plushies.

My children did a science fair project two years ago in which they proved that people can remember bird calls more easily if they learn a mnemonic device (memory aid) to go along with the call. A fun book for learning some of the mnemonic devices is Bird Talk by Ann Jonas.

We have used a lot of bird guides over the years, but our favorite (especially for children) is
Kaufman Field Guide to the Birds of North America by Kenn Kaufman.

This bird guide is more intuitive than other popular bird guides. The birds are not grouped by taxonomy, for a scientist. They are grouped by similar characteristics, for a novice. Thus “chicken-like birds” are grouped together, as are “medium sized land birds”. Each category is color-coded and keyed to a simple, one page color-coded index at the back. The table of contents shows each color-coded section as a long bar, with photos of the types of birds found in that section along the bar. When my children began birding they were too young to read, and they found this guide very usable when others weren’t. I like it for myself, as well! I can find birds much more quickly in this guide than in any other.

I also recommendThe Young Birder’s Guide to the Birds of Eastern North America for children interested in learning more about birds. This guide is specifically geared toward helping the next generation get started with this fun hobby.

If you have a specialty birding store near you, I’d recommend going in to find some childrens binoculars. Most kids binoculars are so poor that they actually discourage kids from birding, yet the price point for anything remotely decent is usually about $65. I would rather see a child with no binoculars at all, than one who has poor binoculars which cause headaches and which obscure, rather than enhance, your view. Many specialty birding stores sell an intermediate binocular, however, that is about $10. These plastic binoculars actually give a decent amount of magnification and field of view for a young beginner, and the price point is so low that you won’t care if they get lost or aren’t used as much as you’d hope. This will give you a good idea of your child’s interest level and whether it is worth it to purchase something more expensive in the future.

Here is that list:

4-25-09
5:00-6:15 p.m.
EL Huie

Purple Martin B
Canada Goose S
Barn Swallow S
American Crow H
Mallard S
Great Blue Heron S
Double Crested Cormorant S
Tree Swallow S
Red-winged Blackbird B
Killdeer B

6:15-7:30 p.m.
Newman Wetlands

Prothonotary Warbler H
Mourning Dove B
Pine Warbler B
N. Cardinal B
E. Meadowlark H
Carolina Chickadee H
Blue Jay H
Red-bellied Woodpecker H
Red-eyed Vireo H
Tufted Titmouse H
N. Parula H
American Goldfinch S
White-breasted Nuthatch B
Brown-headed Nuthatch B
Catbird H

7:30-8:00 p.m.
EL Huie

Bank Swallow S

8:00 p.m.
Outside Shamrock/Blaylock

Palm Warbler H
Yellow Warbler H

8:15-8:30 p.m.
Nash Farms

Blue-winged Warbler H
Eastern Towhee H
Brown Thrasher H
Chestnut-sided Warbler H

4-26-09
6:00-6:30 a.m.

Black-crowned Night Heron H
Eastern Screech Owl H

7:00-8:00 a.m.
Charlie Elliott

Carolina Wren H
Common Grackle B
Eastern Kingbird S
Chimney Swift S
Belted Kingfisher H
White-eyed Vireo S
Indigo Bunting H
Eastern Phoebe H
Pileated Woodpecker H
Scarlet Tanager B
Cedar Waxwing H
Prairie Warbler H
Downy Woodpecker H
Cape May Warbler H
Chipping Sparrow S

9:25-10:30 a.m.
Driving between CE and around Monticello

Wild Turkey S
Turkey Vulture S
Black Vulture S
Field Sparrow H
N. Mockingbird S
American Robin H
House Finch H

10:30 a.m.- 3:00 p.m
Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge

American Redstart H
Black-throated Green Warbler H
Common Yellowthroat H
Great-crested Flycatcher H
Red-cockaded Woodpecker H
Northern Rough-winged Swallow S
Black and White Warbler H
Eastern-wood Pewee H
Blackburnian Warbler H
Bay-breasted Warbler H
Orange-crowned Warbler H
Cerulean Warbler H
Black-throated Blue Warbler H
Worm-eating warbler H
Tennessee Warbler H

4:45 p.m.
Charlie Elliot

Pine Siskin H

S= Seen
H= Heard
B= Both

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.

Something else rather surprising happened today. A Pileated Woodpecker flew up on the deck. It actually flew to the window, grabbed hold of the screen and pecked at the window glass a few times. David had already heard it earlier in the day, pecking at the deck, and all of the boys were right at the window when it flew up, so they got an incredibly close look at it! That definitely goes on our list for “Season’s strangest sightings”!

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

I looked over my notes from last year and saw that they flew through this same week, perhaps even on this very day. I wrote on December 7th that “this week we had a large flock come through”. Today is December 4th. I also wrote last year that “they came through at this time last year, as well”. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the importance at that time of recording exact dates, but as near as I can pinpoint it, it seems as if they fly through the first week in December every year, and possibly even on December 4th each year. We’ll have to wait until next year to know for sure!! I’ll try to upload the video from this year and the photos from last year soon.

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.