Friday 26th - Sunday 28th January 2024
I set up a bird watching station next to the window as part of their toy rotation at the beginning of the week that would end with the bird watch weekend. I dug out their binoculars and Bear's bird identification books, as well as a couple of books to do with birds and the garden. I also had a bird identification poster and some flash cards so that we could learn what birds we might see in the garden when we did the
Big Garden Birdwatch.
Our first move during the week, apart from learning the birds, was to buy some bird seed to fill up our current bird feeders, and to buy a new one for the fence. Both boys had fun in the garden helping to fill up the feeders, though The Cub just preferred sticking his hands in the bag of seed to be fair.
Bear can now confidently identify most birds by their picture that could come into the garden. He already knew blackbirds, robins, crows, pigeons, and blue tits. He can now add jackdaws, chaffinches, great tits and collared doves to that list.
The boys loved watching for birds with their binoculars out of the window, despite the fact that Bear insists on using them back to front!
On the Saturday, Bear and I spent an hour in front of the window, looking through the
RSPB Activity Book that I'd gotten from Waterstones. He had a blast doing the activities and using all the stickers - one of his favourite things to do! I was so proud of his willingness to try the new types of activities, including some writing and drawing. He drew the view from the window, including his bird feeders, and then added some stickers. He was so proud of his drawing, as was I, as until now, his drawings tend to always be the same few things, trucks mainly!
So... for the hour that we classed as our official garden bird watch, Bear and spotted a grand total of zero birds in the garden! We did however, get a cheeky squirrel that came to check out the new bench feeder. He is quite a regular in the garden and despite the lack of birds, Bear was excited to watch him scurrying around the garden looking for what we assumed to be his buried nuts as well as stealing the seed from the bird feeder on the fence.
The following day, we spent some more time in the garden and made some pine cone bird feeders with peanut butter and bird seed, and Bear hung them on the tree at the bottom of the garden.
Bear isn't much of a 'getting sticky' kinda kid, and quickly decided he'd hang all the feeders after I'd made them... The Cub however, doesn't have the same hang ups and was quickly covered in peanut butter and had bird seed stuck to him. Maybe the birds would have come to check him out if we'd stayed outside long enough!
Since then, we have had an overconfident pigeon and a pair of male blackbirds that have been in and out of the garden to check out what we have to offer, but other than that, we are still bird less.
Since the weekend, we have done Bear's journal page in his nature journal. He drew another bird, copied the word and we stuck in his chart from the watch, which we filled in with the pigeon and the blackbirds even though they didn't come during our official watch. Then we used some of the left over stickers from his book to add to the page. We picked the ones that we hoped we would have seen in the garden, and put plenty of pigeons on there!
Bear also filled in some more of the activities in his activity book, and in the back, we found a certificate which Bear wrote his name on to deem himself a Brilliant Birdwatcher!
Did you take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch? We'd love to know what birds visited your garden :)
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