Project FeederWatch is a program from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Backyard birdwatchers from across the country count and report birds via online database. Its through this database that scientists and ornithologists gain understanding of bird populations. People of all ages and experience levels can participate and the library is participating! We have a count site, and have created a FeederWatch account to submit our data!
We’ve selected our count site, and designated it with pink flags.
When you’re downtown or at the library, you can observe birds at our feeder and count site. Count for as little or as long as you want (for 10 minutes or an hour!)
How to Count
Stop inside the library and grab a tally sheet.
Each time you you see a species at your count site, count the number of individuals in view simultaneously and record that number.
If later during your count period, you see more individuals in view simultaneously, revise your tally sheet. Do not add your counts together; only record the largest number of individual species in view simultaneously. This will prevent double counting birds.
The largest number of each species you saw becomes the number that we will report to FeederWatch.
FeederWatch runs until April 30.
Homeschool Tie In
This is a great project for homeschool families. Here are some great ways you can incorporate the project with daily lessons:
Science: Bird species identification; meteorology and recording weather
Math: Tallying, graphing
Writing: Journaling, creative writing such as poetry
Geography: i.e. Have student make a map of the count site
History: research famous bird biologists or timelines of extinction of various species
Art: ask student to sketch what they are observing
Music: Study bird songs or calls
Learn more: https://feederwatch.org/