On a Wing and a Prayer
Lesson Introduction
There are over twenty five million bird watchers in the United States. Like the researchers in the On a Wing and a Prayer video, these bird watchers visit all kinds of bird habitats (definition) to find many different kinds of birds. Each kind of bird has a specific habitat it prefers. Neo-tropical songbirds are forest dwellers rather than backyard birds, but there are plenty of species (definition) in any environment for students to watch. One thing bird watchers all have in common is their ability to distinguish between different species of birds. It is important to be very detailed when describing a bird.
In this lesson, students identify birds by focusing on specific bird characteristics. They become familiar with recognizing different body parts as they practice making detailed observations and taking field notes. Recognizing the shape of wings, beak sizes, tails, and legs will assist them in identifying birds.
Grade Level
2 through 10
Objectives
The students will:
1. create different shapes of bird feathers, bird tails, and bird wings.
2. participate in a bird watching expedition.
3. keep a journal of bird sightings.
Time Allotment
one 40-minute session, plus two trips outside for observations
Materials
bird guide/photos of songbirds
student journals
pencils or pens
construction paper
scissors
video/video player
Books to Read
Birdwatching, by Roger Tory Peterson, Washington, DC: National Wildlife Federation, 1973.
Coat Pocket Bird Book, by John Gilette, Lansing, MI: Two Peninsula Press, 1984.
Feathers for Lunch, by Lois Ehlert, New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Javanovich. 1990.
A Field Guide to Birds, by Roger Tory Peterson, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.
For the Birds, by Margaret Atwood, Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 1990.
Our Yard is Full of Birds, by Anne Rockwell, New York, NY: MacMillan, 1992.
Urban Roost, by Barbara Bash, San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1990.
Advanced Preparation and Teacher Notes
Join one of Cornell University's Citizen Science programs. One of them, Project FeederWatch, is a popular backyard bird research program to identify and count the birds that visit your feeder. You can join for $15. Your fee helps defray the costs of materials and data analysis. Write for information to PFW, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY
14850-1999, or call 1.800.843.BIRD.
Also, Classroom FeederWatch is a new curriculum aimed at students in grades 5-8, supported by NSF. It consists of 16 different explorations which culminate after eight months in participation in Project FeederWatch. Call Classroom FeederWatch at 607.254.2440 or send e-mail to BirdEducation@cornell.edu
Pick a spot to take a walk outside. Try to find an area where there may be birds. Arrange students in cooperative groups.
Procedure
Tap Prior Knowledge
1. Offer the students photos of several different songbirds. How many can they identify?
Share with Neighbor/Revise Ideas
2. Allow the students to talk in their groups about their identification of the bird photos. Did they all have the same responses? Or were there a variety of answers? Show the section of the On a Wing and a Prayer video (from 10 57 to 13 24) which highlights Scott Robinson's annual survey of birds. Share one of the biographies from our Career Connections with the students.
Engage Students in a Hands-on Activity
3. Take a bird walk around the neighborhood. Record what you see. Don't worry about using a data sheet at this point. Let students write down their observations in their journals in any form they would like.
4. There will be much confusion about the identification of certain birds, because many birds have the similar shapes. Once back in the classroom, get out the bird photos again and distribute construction paper and scissors. Invite the students to make their own bird guides to use in the field. As they put together the body parts and shapes, be sure they concentrate on specific features of the birds. For example, a yellow-headed woodpecker has pointed wings, a long, thin beak, and its tail is pointed. It has very short legs, not like those of a Sandpiper.
Introduce the Scientific Principle/Concept
5. Birds are different from each other not only in size, shape, and color, but also in what they eat. For some clues to what a bird eats and how it obtains its food, look at its bill. A cardinal uses its thick cone- shaped bill to crack the hard covers on seeds. It then eats the soft kernels inside. A hummingbird uses its long thin beak to reach into flowers. Beaks can be short and thick like that of a Bauchman sparrow or lengthy and slender like a Bewick's wren.
6. Wings may have a point shape to them like that of a swallow or may be round like that of a spruce grouse. General size should be estimated in relation to other, more well-known birds. Is the bird you see bigger or smaller than a bluebird?
7. With tails, there is more of contrast because you have more of an abundance of shapes. For example, there is the brown creeper with its forked shape tail. The white-breasted nuthatch with its round tipped shape tail, the ruby crowned kinglet with its notched tail, the brewer's blackbird with its square-tipped shape tail, and the pileated woodpecker possessing a pointed tail shape with its flaming red crest.
8. Songbirds represent a diverse group of birds known for their singing. Common families of songbirds include finches, tanagers, thrushes, and wrens. In most songbirds, the males sing the 'primary song', a series of sounds that is characteristic of specific species, and which is used during the spring and summer in courtship and territory definition. They are passerines, birds that perch, and they have feet with three toes directed forward and one directed backwards that are flexible and able to grip a perch.
9. One last thing to note is where the bird is in the tree. Warblers, kinglets, vireos, chickadees stay near the tops of the trees looking for insects. Woodpeckers, nuthatches, black and white warblers and brown creepers stay among the trunk and limbs. Robins, thrushes, are most likely to be on the forest floor.
10. Go outside again, this time armed with more preparation and the students' own field guides. Stress taking data this time using a report like this:
Connect to Other Everyday Examples
11. Give students a chance to surf the World Wide Web to find more sites about bird watching:
