In many parts of the country, it’s the height of spring – the season when flowers push their stalks through the ground, buds burst into leaves, and insects, frogs and countless other species emerge from winter dormancy. But perhaps the most obvious sign of spring’s return is the arrival of migrating birds on their expedition north for the summer.
To recognize this annual cycle, this year the City Room blog, in partnership with WNYC.org and the citizen science project eBird, declared the second week of May Bird Week, with a series of features exploring our relationship with these feathered friends.
Below, in honor of Bird Week, we offer a suite of ideas for teaching about birds in our environment.
What birds are you familiar with where you live?
What birds do you know of that live in other places? Where have you seen them?
What do you know about these birds?
Why all the interest in birds, especially at this time of year?
How and why do scientists collect data about birds? How are citizen scientists playing an important role in gathering this information?
What can we learn about our environment by observing birds?
How and why do birds migrate?
What are some of the risks birds face during migration?
Bird Background: What are the most common local birds? View the interactive maps of four migratory species commonly found east of the Mississippi River. If you are west of the Mississippi, view instead the maps of the Swainson’s Hawk, horned lark, western meadowlark and mountain bluebird. As students observe maps, they jot answers to the following questions in their journals: Have you heard of any of these species? Have you seen these birds? How does each one look and sound? What are some of its life history characteristics? What does it feed on, and where in your region would you expect this species to find food? What requirements does it have for nesting sites? Could this species find these resources in your community? When is each species expected to first appear in your region? How long is it expected to stay there? When will it begin its migration back south? They do more research to fill in any gaps.
Project Observation: After doing the background activity above, students begin a project to collect data on birds in your community. Useful resources include All About Birds. You might also invite a representative from a local birding organization to talk to the class about what birds you can expect to see in your location at this time of year. Set parameters for data that should be collected and assign locations for observations. Students might also use cameras to observe the activity of a single bird family over a period of time. They can submit their data to a project like eBird or create their own annotated map of their findings and compare their map to others.
Interpreting Migration Map Data: After doing a mapping project, pairs of students identify four species common to your region and create graphs or charts – or word clouds – that visually display the information in the migration maps, like the timing of the first occurrence of the species in your area. They can also track and create a visualization showing how the timing of arrival coincides with other natural phenomena, like the first emergence of insects in the spring, and discuss why this might be important to migrating birds. And they can determine which species they are most likely to encounter by examining the numbers on the Y-axis on each map, which is the probability of encountering the species, or the percent chance of finding that species on a typical early morning birdwalk. (For example, in June, residents of western Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota have a 25 percent chance of encountering an eastern bluebird, but by December, that chance drops to almost zero.) Which of the four species are they most likely, and least likely, to encounter during the peak migration season? What other information can they find by analyzing these maps?
Understanding Bird Migration: Students explore some of the reasons birds migrate, including finding food, securing nesting sites and, according to recent research, avoiding predators. The mechanics of migration raises countless other questions worthy of further investigation. Students could, for instance, research the physiology of birds like bar-tailed godwits, which fly nonstop for over 7,000 miles across the open ocean, and Blackpoll warblers, which double their body weight in mere days to pack on enough fat to power them during an 80-hour nonstop flight to South America each fall. Students might reflect on how their own bodies and abilities would be affected if they underwent similar changes in a short period of time, or explore the importance of stopover sites to migrating birds and propose solutions to the global loss of these critical habitats.
Citizen Science: In addition to eBird, other citizen-science bird projects students can participate in include NestWatch, the Great Backyard Bird Count, the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count and Project Feeder Watch. Students create short public service announcements highlighting what scientists hope to learn from these citizen-driven projects.
Tweet, Tweet: Students can use Twitter and other social media to share their bird sightings and track others’ posts, like the set of Twitter posts on Central Park Birds. What can they glean from following social media feeds about birds? What exchanges have they had with scientists, citizen scientists, students and enthusiasts?
Birds in the Big City: Students view the slide show Urban Bird Habitats, including the captions, and then discuss: Were they surprised to see birds in so many urban settings? Did they recognize the names of any of the species photographed here? Have they seen any of these birds in their own neighborhoods? Where? Next, lead a short brainstorm about how birds in cities find food, water and other resources. What are some of the hazards of city life for birds? How do skyscrapers and other tall structures pose risks to migrating birds? What are some ways to mitigate these hazards? What might be some hazards to birds in your own community? How are the lives of urban, suburban and rural birds different?
Birds and You: Students visit a park, nature center or other wildlife area – even their own backyards – and spend 15 minutes sitting with their journals and jotting down any observations or inferences about birds that come to them, including anything they glean using sight and hearing. Back in the classroom, they read the poems “Once,” by Tara Brey, and “Brief Eden” by Lois Beebe Hayna. Using these poems as inspiration, they write poems of their own based on their observations in nature. Invite students to share their writing with the class.
Birds in the News: Students choose a specific topic, like endangered birds or a specific bird, like the penguin, and track related news coverage in The Times for a specific period of time. They then analyze the coverage with respect to science. What background knowledge does the writer assume the reader has? What further information would provide more context and specifics for the reader? Would the articles be useful for science students, or are they for a more general audience only?