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Wednesday 27 August 2014

Bird Watching with kids

We have been spending our last few weeks on bird watching along with our regular schedules.  I've heard that April to September is the best season to watch birds. You can go for bird watching year round, but during these months you can collect nests and feathers too.

We are fortunate to have so many birds in our backyard and farmyard that include ring neck parrot, brown eagle, magpie robin, yellow billed babblers, wren, flower pecker, king fisher, wood pecker, Eurasian hoopoe, mynah,brahminy mynah and baya weavers.  Of course, these are the common birds of Indian Subcontinent.   In fact, one of the important things in bird watching is to identify the birds’ names and only now I came to know most of these names. My little one gave me a chance to know about birds. 



For the last few months I have been collecting the articles -‘love for birds’ that came along with the supplementary of ‘Dinakaran Tamil Daily’.  It helped me a lot to identify the bird’s name and  we used internet to extend our study on feathers and nests.

We collected nests and feathers during our walk. Whenever we get a new feather, we enjoyed a lot and we tried to identify the birds.  
                                                
                                                    investigating a feather(Kingfisher's)


We observed the birds, listened to them and tried to imitate their sounds.  We even noticed that some birds are walking and some are hopping. (I learnt that birds habitually perch in trees hop and birds those spend most of the time in ground for food walks).

Feathers collected( feathers of parrot, pigeon, king fisher, parrot, babbler, hoopoe, brown eagle and peacock)


Our Nest Collection- some cup shaped and some pendulum shaped.


Pictures of some of our backyard birds (taken by my brother)

Baya weaver


Mynah:

 Magpie robin:

Yellow billed Babblers:


When peafowls visited our backyard...