It's been cold and rainy lately. I can't complain about the rain -- despite our leaky back door and soggy carpet -- because we've had such a terrible drought that we need all the rain we can get! And cold! Tomorrow's high is only suppose to be 32 degrees, and for Georgia, that might as well be arctic temperatures. All that to say, we haven't been doing as much outdoor nature study lately. However, we haven't given up our nature studies. When all else fails, we have a fabulous bird feeder right outside the window by our breakfast table, so we watch our little birdie friends on even the coldest days. One bird that never seems perturbed or slowed down by the weather is our little friend the chickadee.I love wild birds. They make me happy. Some days as I'm sitting at my desk, I lose count of how many birds I can see in the back yard! My favorites tend to be the smaller birds: the chickadee, titmouse, wrens, bluebirds, goldfinches and house finches, the wrens and sparrows. Cardinals, too. OK, we love 'most all the birds, except the mockingbird when he gets territorial and won't let other birds near the feeder. But he only does that occasionally in the spring, so everybody is getting along pretty well right now.
We've found that The Handbook of Nature Study has a big section on birds, and despite the fact that the author was not from our area, we have many of the same birds as are in the book. Any time that we can't get outdoors enough to do a proper nature study, we'll just study one of our birds. We have a wonderful bird identification book that we keep by the breakfast table, too, to identify any new visitors to our feeder. It's the Stokes Beginner's Guide to Birds, and ours is the "Eastern Birds" edition.
After observing our chickadees on the feeder and in the back yard, we read about them in The Handbook of Nature Study. They also happen to be the bird-of-the-month on our Audobon Bird Calendar that hangs in our school room. Ours are carolina chickadees, often confused with black-capped chickadee. From our calendar, we learned that where the two species overlap, they also interbreed, making them even harder to indentify! Kathryn and I both drew entries for our nature journals. (Click either one to enlarge.) Sometimes she balks at doing a journal entry, but once she gets started, she usually does a great job. I've found that it helps her if I do a journal entry myself, too -- enthusiasm is contagious!This past spring, we discovered a chickadee nest in a fence post at my mom's house. Ken got a few great pictures of the babies in the nest -- quite an accomplishment considering how TINY the hole in the top of the fence post was! Please go look at these two wonderful photos, and the adorable babies in there!
