After receiving a gift subscription to Nature Friend from grandparents, our family has been thoroughly enjoying the Premium Edition for the past year.
“Are we going to do the spring birding contest?” Monica wondered.
I had noticed it too. It did look like fun. Even though we didn’t think we had a big variety of birds here, it would still be something fun to do together. I kept it tucked away in my mind, thinking maybe.
One morning in mid-May, Juliana heard an unusual bird call and searched to find the source. “I think I saw a pair of Baltimore Orioles,” she reported. This was exciting! We have rarely seen them here.
Later that morning, Ansley and I walked over to the barn. As we crossed the bridge in the lane, we saw a mother Wood Duck and her seven babies. They swam hurriedly away, disappearing along the banks of Silver Creek. I decided this would be a good day to start our bird search.
It was surprising how many birds there were when we began to focus on seeing them.
We told the schoolgirls when they arrived home, and they were happy to join in the hunt. At the supper table, our schoolteacher daughter surprised us when she said that she and her co-teachers thought they heard a cuckoo at their school by the river. For sure, this was the perfect day to start our search. By the end of the day, we had found fifteen species.
What varieties of birds would our second day of birding bring forth? I asked Michael if he could spot a starling and blackbird for us. He found those without any trouble. To my delight, he also added Chimney Swift and kingfisher to the list.
The schoolgirls went off to school with intentions of keeping an eye out for birds. Two of them were invited away overnight. From their friends’ creek, they gained a Great Blue Heron.
Just before suppertime, a mockingbird landed briefly in the shrub behind our kitchen. As we began our meal, a hummingbird checked out the hanging basket on the front porch. Oh, good! We didn’t know whether we dared hope for one of those yet, as we had no feeders out.
After eating, Aubrey, Ansley, and I put Grace in the stroller and took a walk to see if we could add any more birds to our list. We went down our road, which follows the creek. We spotted a sparrow hawk (American Kestrel) gliding into the trees by the creek, but the best was yet to come.
When we were almost home from our jaunt, we began hearing the high, clear, piping notes of a bird in the walnut trees in our yard. I wondered if that could be the orioles. Meanwhile, Juliana was coming toward us on her way home from the barn. She was hearing and recognizing the orioles’ call.
We met on either side of our circle drive and gazed up into the walnut trees. Soon we saw the orioles fluttering and swooping among the trees. After a bit, they swooped down to the grass where we could get a good look at the brilliant orange and black plumage. This was special to us, as we’ve only gotten brief glimpses of them in the twenty-two years we’ve lived here.
We had twelve more species to put on our list for the second day. We hoped for a Bald Eagle to make an appearance, but so far none had. Perhaps we would hear an owl hooting at night.
The third day of our birding project dawned. Were there any more species to discover after two days of birding already? Well, yes, there would be, but it just didn’t seem likely that they would appear in our yard.
Around mid-morning, I was in the living room trying to see a bird on the electric line by our house, when a big bird flying over the creek caught my eye. Was it…? Yes, it was a Bald Eagle! That was happily added to our list.
After that, the sightings ended for a while. The younger girls and I went on another walk after supper. We headed up the road this time. We heard and then saw a meadowlark at the end of the lane. In our neighbor’s yard, we snagged a Brown Thrasher and Purple Martins. Farther up the lane near some woodland, we saw a nuthatch, heard the drumming taps of a woodpecker, and heard a Blue Jay screaming, “Thief!” In the softening evening light, we saw a hawk flying around.
When you begin to focus on one certain object, it is amazing how many you begin to see. Every time we went out the door, there were always birds flying here and there, and bird songs on the air. So often we just live and work while hardly noticing the bird life around us.
Another fun thing to do is to see how many birds you can find mentioned in the Bible. Just like a real-life bird-watching spree, it is surprising how many are there all the time, just waiting for us to discover them.
A project like this is a lot of fun, and not just for the birds!