How do you get kids get interested in birds? How do you spend quiet minutes scanning the trees and straining your ears for chirps and calls in the quiet morning air?
Beginning birdwatching, like reading poetry, should be enjoyable. You might even say “fun,” though it’s a quiet, tame kind of fun. Ultimately, observing birds is an act of love, giving our attention to even small details of the strange little flying creatures that surround us. If you begin with love, the birds become like familiar friends you revisit throughout life.
If you express an interest in birding, people tend to assume you received a biology degree with academic expertise in ornithology. No such study is necessary. Sure, it would be helpful, but there is something edifying about beginning as a true novice: ignorant and aware of your ignorance.
The humbleness of your position allows you, along with your child, simply to look around and begin once more to wonder at the creatures in the sky.
Finding Birds Close By
The first step in successfully birding is finding the feathered creatures in your own backyard, literally. In rural places, the wild things own the land more than the people. Birds can be found strutting about boldly. In more citified settings, birds still move through altered landscapes with surprising ease, and the number of birds, even next to major highways, huge buildings, or residential neighborhoods, can be astonishing.
You may not know the names of many birds at first. Even the common birds who’ve been bopping around the perimeter of your view all your life may seem sudden strangers when you try to look directly at them and name them.
There are some bold avian visitors who demand to be known: the hawk perched on a high branch letting forth a piercing whistle, the persistent blue jays and cardinals with there striking coloration, the exotic-looking night heron or the wandering community peacocks. You can’t miss those!
Then, there are the more modest fellows. If you hadn’t been watching for birds, would you have noticed the sparrow diligently collecting grass and flitting over the fence to stow them in some unseen nest? When you look, he’s quite striking, too, with a dramatic stripe along the side of the head. He only seemed modest because of his small stature and patina of brown and white that blends in with the scattered oak leaves.
The more you watch birds, the more birds there are to watch. It can seem uncanny: why are there all these birds swirling around my house since I’ve taken an interest in them? Likely, they were there all along. You’ve only just started to notice.
Books to Have On-Hand
Field guides for birding are eye-catching. Meticulous illustrations of birds, from the mundane to the exotic, are fascinating. They are coffee table books that can be thumbed through, whether or not there are any birds around.
As kids—and adults—start to familiarize themselves with the different bird families, the naming, ever more precisely, of different birds can be a fun and challenging pastime. You’d be surprised how even a straightforward little bird can perplex. Is it a Chipping Sparrow, a Lark Sparrow, or is it actually not a sparrow at all? Even if you never find out, you can enjoy the process of watching and wondering. Learning to enjoy the unknown does one a world of good.
Birdcalls: Essential, Especially for the Loud Kids
Observing birds is a hobby that quiet children might take to readily. The more rambunctious might revel in the creation of bird songs and calls. Here is an area where the unselfconscious child excels. Shy children and most adults will hesitate before attempting to reproduce the chipping, squeaking, whirring, and whistling noises of the neighborhood birds.
The person who overcomes the embarrassment of trying to sound like a bird will have great fun demonstrating the calls of different birds and “conversing” with birds by imitating their songs. Curiosity about these funny little sequences will also yield interesting observations. For example in the northeast, the Black-capped Chicadee does, indeed, say, “Chicka-dee-dee-dee.” In the south, however, the dominant Carolina Chicadee frequently says only, “Fee-bee-fee-bay.”
There are wonderful mnemonic devices for birdcalls. For example, the Barred Owl in Texas says, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for y’all?” The Oven Bird in New Hampshire is commonly said to say, “Teacher, teacher, teacher!” But someone wisely noted it’s easier to remember the Oven Bird calling, “Pizza, pizza, pizza!”
There is no end of fun to be had with birding. Even children, perhaps especially children, can enjoy the discipline of watching and waiting for birds to appear, listening carefully for calls and songs, imitating and memorizing the language of our feathered friends.
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