Discover Birds: Ornithological Society--Knoxville Chapter (KTOS)

Showing posts with label Ornithological Society--Knoxville Chapter (KTOS). Show all posts

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Discover Birds Visits 240 Students at Sevierville Primary School!

Seven volunteers from the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society visited Sevierville Primary School on May 23rd to present the Discover Birds Program to 240 second graders and their teachers!

Photo by Tom Howe

Students were divided into groups to rotate through the three parts of the program, a slide show introduction to birds, a show-and-tell session with bird related items, and a guided bird walk.

Photo by Warren Bielenberg.

Suzie Kaplar introduces students to birds with a slide show. Photo by Tom Howe.

Photo by Warren Bielenberg. Doug Schneeberger, above, talks with students about bird skeletons, feathers, nests, eggs and other items that are passed around for students to see closely.

Students were equipped with binoculars and bird ID cards to help them see and identify birds as they broke into small groups of twelve for their bird walks. Bird walks were led by Chris Welsh, Tony King, Warren Bielenberg, Kris Johnson and Tom Howe.

Photo by Warren Bielenberg

Tom described his experience with students: "It was great fun with great weather. The students had awe-inspiring looks at birds through the spotting scopes including Tree Swallows, Brown-headed Cowbirds, Mourning Doves and an Eastern Kingbird. Students saw many more birds with binoculars, including Chimney Swifts, Blue Jays, Eastern Towhees and Carolina Chickadees. The big birds elicited the biggest response--a monstrous great blue heron, a red-tailed hawk and turkey vultures!"

Photo by Tom Howe

"Sarah Greene, the lead teacher, filled the school's bird feeders and put seed on the classroom window sills which afforded many good looks at a variety of birds. Shortly after explaining how pishing provokes birds into mobbing behavior, because, it's believed, that it sounds like a wren scolding a predator, we saw a Red-winged Blackbird chasing off a predatory Red-tailed Hawk by dive-bombing it. Other highlights included Chris Welsh finding a gray catbird's nest and showing the students a picture he took of the eggs, explaining, it's best not to disturb a nest with a crowd. We had a great time and look forward to next year!"

Above, Warren shows students a bird they've identified on their ID guide. Photo by Tom Howe

Photo by Warren Bielenberg

Warren described the students as very knowledgeable about birds and nature and interested, asking many questions. "I think we ended up with about 25 species during the morning. We, had great views of Eastern bluebirds and Tree swallows in the birdhouses. Carolina chickadees, Mourning doves, Northern Cardinals and Eastern Towhees were seen at the feeders. We also found some spittlebugs, caterpillars, raccoon tracks and scat. All in all, a good morning!"

Above, Tree Swallows in the process of nest building on the Sevierville Primary School campus.

A big thank you to Sarah Green and her fellow teachers at Sevierville Primary School for inviting the Discover Birds Program into their classrooms and for sharing their bird-friendly outdoor campus.
Each student and teacher received a Discover Birds Activity Book, compliments of KTOS.

Thank you also to KTOS Discover Birds volunteers Susie Kaplar, Tony King, Chris Welsh, Kris Johnson, Warren Bielenberg, Doug Schneeberger and Tom Howe for making this program happen!

Links and Resources:

Sevierville Primary School

KTOS--Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society
KTOS on Facebook
Discover Birds Program
Discover Birds Activity Book
online version--Discover Birds Activity Book
Discover Birds Curriculum Guide
Discover Birds in the Tennessee Conservationist
eBird at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Tennessee Birds
Tennessee Watchable Wildlife--Birds
Cornell's free beginning birding app--Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Audubon Mobile Field Guides

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Discover Birds Visits 280 Second Graders at Sevierville Primary School!

On May 15, 2015, Discover Birds volunteers from the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society visited Sevierville Primary School to present the Discover Birds Program to 280 enthusiastic second graders and their teachers!

The Discover Birds Program is a three-part program to introduce children to birds with a variety of interactive experiences. The program is presented in three parts: a slide show, a show-and-tell session and a bird walk that includes the use of binoculars and birding scopes.

Above, Billie Cantwell asks children about their favorite birds. She then presents a slide show showing a variety of birds that live in different habitats with a variety of sizes, shapes, beaks and feet.

The children also get to hear the bird's songs and stories about birds that Billie has in her own yard, including wintering Rufous Hummingbirds and a pair of nesting Screech Owls.

The children are divided into three to four groups to include a guided bird walk around the school grounds to find birds and learn to locate them with binoculars. Above you see students practicing with their binoculars. The Discover Birds Program recently acquired twelve new pair of student binoculars through a generous donation from the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological society and a matching donation from Eagle Optics.

Above Chris Welsh leads students on a bird walk along the creek that borders the school grounds. Among the birds found on our bird walks was the Mourning Dove, a bird whose name comes from the "mournful" sound of its song.

Sometimes the doves were seen on the electrical wires overhead. At other times, they visited the bird bath. At first glance the Mourning Dove looks like a large plain brown bird with some dark spots on its back.

A closer look through binoculars or a scope shows that it is a colorful bird with a light blue eye ring, pink at the corner of its bill and pink feet!

Below, Doug Schneeberger shows students the difference between the size of a Bald Eagle egg (left) and the egg of a hummingbird. The hummingbird's egg is about the size of a jelly bean. The eggs he is showing are replicas of eggs made to the size and color of the actual bird's eggs.

Doug brought a variety of skeletons, samples of talons, eggs, nests, and other bird-related items to show the children, many of which were in cases and passed around for closer inspection.

Below, a display of owl pellet castings and the skulls and bones that can be found in them. Owls eat small rodents with hair and bones that can't be digested. These indigestible parts are gathered into a pellet in the owl's stomach and "cast" out or "thrown up" to expel them.

Below, Warren Bielenberg gets his telescope focused on a Tree Swallow perched on a wire so the students can see its shiney greenish-blue feathers that often look black in flight.

Sevierville Primary School has created a bird-friendly yard with many nest boxes erected to support cavity nesting birds. A pair of Eastern Bluebirds, below, were on the nest box they have chosen for nesting. The bright blue male is on the left in back, and the female, more grayish in color, is in the front. Both the male and female have a rust breast.

Tree Swallows are also cavity nesting birds. On the walk along the creek we encountered a male Tree Swallow bringing feathers to his mate who was waiting in the nest box. Tree Swallows form a nest of dry grasses that is hollowed out and lined with feathers. The feathers are often placed so that they curve over the nest. In Massachusetts, 147 feathers were counted in one nest box!

Below, volunteer Karen Wilkinson talks with second grade students as they view birds through a scope.

Students rotated through each of the activities. Below, Chris Welsh helps students get organized into smaller groups with an assigned leader for their bird walks.

As students looked at birds through binoculars and scopes, Chris asked them what they noticed about the bird. What color is the bird? What color is it's beak? Can you see the eye color? Is the bird large or small? These details help you recognize the bird the next time you encounter it.

Above, a student tells Karen Wilkenson about the birds he saw on the creek trail.
(Don't miss the feet in the air behind him! One of the students was turning cartwheels as she returned from her birding walk!)

Above, Morton Massey leads a group of birders back to the school!

A mature Bald Eagle treated us to a low fly-over carrying food in its talons with a small bird chasing it! This was an exciting sighting for all of us!

A pair of Bald Eagles Photo credit: David Roemer

All the students knew that the Bald Eagle is our country's national symbol.

Chris Welsh recorded an eBird list of the birds he encountered on our bird walks. Thirty-one (31) species of birds were found in and around the school yard, many of them involved in various stages of nesting activities!

May 15, 2015
Sevierville Primary School
Traveling
0.2 miles
190 Minutes
Observers: 1
All birds reported? Yes
Comments: Discover Birds program for -280 2nd graders at Sevierville Primary School. Exciting flyby by the eagle; falcon more distant and moving away.
1 Osprey
1 Bald Eagle -- Adult, roof level flyover with something dead in its talons
1 Red-tailed Hawk
1 Peregrine Falcon -- Large falcon flyover, too big for kestrel or Merlin, but no details other than silhouette
4 Mourning Dove
1 Chimney Swift
2 Red-bellied Woodpecker
2 Downy Woodpecker
3 Eastern Phoebe -- 2 young in nest under bridge
1 Blue Jay
2 American Crow
2 Northern Rough-winged Swallow
3 Tree Swallow
1 Barn Swallow
1 Carolina Chickadee
1 White-breasted Nuthatch
2 Eastern Bluebird
2 American Robin
2 Gray Catbird
1 Brown Thrasher
5 European Starling
1 Common Yellowthroat
2 Eastern Towhee
2 Song Sparrow
2 Northern Cardinal
1 Red-winged Blackbird
3 Common Grackle
4 Brown-headed Cowbird
2 House Finch
2 American Goldfinch
2 Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)

Each of the students and teachers received a Discover Birds Activity Book compliments of KTOS and the Tennessee Ornithological Society!

A big thank you to Sarah Green and her fellow teachers at Sevierville Primary School for inviting the Discover Birds Program into their classrooms. THANK YOU also to KTOS Discover Birds volunteers Susie Kaplar, Morton Massey, Chris Welsh, Warren Bielenberg, Karen Wilkinson, Billie Cantwell, Doug Schneeberger and Vickie Henderson for making this program happen!

Links and Resources:

Sevierville Primary School

KTOS--Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society
KTOS on Facebook
Discover Birds Program
Discover Birds Activity Book
Discover Birds Curriculum Guide
Discover Birds in the Tennessee Conservationist
eBird at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Tennessee Birds
Tennessee Watchable Wildlife--Birds
Cornell's free beginning birding app--Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Audubon Mobile Field Guides

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Discovering Birds with South Knoxville Elementary Students!

On November 7th, Discover Birds volunteers paid a visit to after-school students at the South Knoxville Elementary School to present the Discover Birds program and help students find birds that live around their school yard.

Learning to use binoculars to get better looks at the birds, was the first activity students experienced before going outside for their bird walks on the sidewalks of the campus.

Students learned to adjust the binocular focus for their vision, to focus on stationary objects and to bring the binoculars up to their eyes while still looking at the object or bird in order to get the binoculars on the object.

Jerry Ledbetter suggests students focus on the words on a sign in the lobby for practice.

Below, Lynn Davis talks with students about using their ears to listen for birds. The presence of birds is often noted first with our ears because they make many vocalizations while foraging and flocking. Being quiet increases the chances of hearing a bird and reduces the chances of scaring the bird away.

Once outside, the students watched for movement and listened for the sounds birds make while feeding or flying. There were several types of berry producing shrubs near the school grounds that attracted birds.

Above, Jerry Ledbetter helps a student get his binoculars on a bird. Once the bird is in view, students took note of the bird's characteristics. What markings are on the face? What is the bird's overall size and shape, the overall color? What color is the beak?

Look closely to find the bird in the image above. Sometimes leaves and limbs get in the way of seeing the entire bird at once, but we can often see enough to identify the species. A small flock of Cedar Waxwings was feeding on the ripe, red berries found in this honeysuckle shrub. Normally, the waxy tips of a Cedar Waxwing's tail are yellow, but if the bird eats many of these honeysuckle berries while the feathers are developing, the red content in the berries turns the tail tips orange or reddish-orange!

A female Downy Woodpecker, above, was another big hit and easy to see as she foraged on insects on a tree's bare limbs and trunk.

Marikay Waldvogel and Lynn Davis pass out Tennessee Birds--Naturalists Pocket Guides, to help students identify the birds they see. Students also used the guides to identify some of the birds they have seen in their yards at home.

Before returning to the school building to rotate into a different part of the program, third grade students pause to have a group photo made, below. The Discover Birds Program was presented in three parts--a guided bird walk with binoculars, a show-and-tell experience with bird-related objects students can view up close, and a slide presentation about birds. Approximately 66 energetic students participated in the program.

Below, Billie Cantwell talks with students about hummingbirds and their small size and long migration. By placing a tiny band on a hummingbird's leg, biologists are learning about hummingbird migration patterns and their life span.

Billie, who organizes the Discover Birds program visits, has had a male Rufous Hummingbird wintering in her yard in Knoxville for the past four years. She knows it is the same bird each year because of the unique number it wears on its leg band.

Above, Billie talks with students about the unique characteristics of birds that make them different from other animals.

Volunteer, Doug Schneeberger, talks with students about the characteristics of a bird's feathers, including the overlapping barbs at the end of each filament that act like a zipper to hold the feather filaments in place.

A holly full of red berries at the corner of the sidewalk is an attraction for several birds species. A Song Sparrow foraged on the ground underneath for seeds and insects.

A Northern Mockingbird perches on a high holly limb to over look his territory. He didn't seem to mind the movement of the students or the sound of their voices. After all, he lives around the school grounds all the time. Everyone tried to get the mockingbird in focus through their binoculars.

Below, Marikay Waldvogel recalls the bird species seen with a student.

The birds seen during our bird walks included: Northern Mockingbird, Carolina Chickadee, Song Sparrow, Common Grackle, Canada Goose, European Starling, Cedar Waxwing, Downy Woodpecker, American Robin, Mourning Dove and American Crow.

Each of the students received a Discover Birds Activity Book that they could take home with them to continue learning about birds. The books were contributed by the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society.