Your First Bird Lesson

Part of my kindergarten blog will be dedicated to the birds.  Since your child will be learning about birds during this school year, I would like the chance to teach you about birds as well, so that you are "in the know"!  It is a lot of fun to learn something new and since I believe in teaching kids to be life-long learners, we can all get on board and be an example of that.

On our way to the library on Friday, we saw a bird on the bird feeder. I wish I'd had my camera along.   It was a Downy Woodpecker, which I had taught them, but we had never seen one together as a group.  We snuck quite close to this guy.  It is a guy by the way because it has a red patch on its nape/neck. When it flew up into the tree near us, we got an even better look and the kids were so excited!  This was a "life bird" for some students.  That means that it was the first time that they saw that particular bird in your life.  What was your last life bird?

The Downy Woodpecker - I took this photo last February.

There is another woodpecker in our area that looks very similar to this Downy Woodpecker and it is called the Hairy Woodpecker.  It is a bit larger than this one with a longer bill..  To read more about the Downy Woodpecker go to the bird site:  All About Birds/ Downy Woodpecker by clicking here.

To see more of my bird photos of birds in our area, go to my Flickr site by clicking here.  I have found in the past that the students and past students enjoy looking at the birds on my Flickr site.  It helps them learn the birds and learn which birds are in our area.