Bird Watching

Rebecca’s class (Grade 3/4) was studying birds this spring and so as a class trip they went to Rock Point Provincial Park for a day to do some bird watching and to see how they do bird banding.  Bird banding is done in order to monitor migration as well as give an idea of how the birds are doing and whether they are increasing or decreasing in number.  At the Rock Point Bird Banding Station we got to see some of the birds they had caught in the last hour or so and how he bands and records the bird

Some of the birds that were caught that morning.  They have nets up on the property to catch the birds.  The nets are pretty much invisible and harmless to the birds.  They only have the nets up when there are people there to monitor them and if they are not monitoring then they close them up so no birds are left in the nets for a very long period of time. 

I`m afraid I know very little about birds, and after the trip thought that we should at least invest in a bird book so we can get a better idea of what is flying around our property.  We did see quite a few warblers and  oriole birds … which I had never know where called that before … as I said, I know very little about bird, cept they have wings and most of them fly.

So I can`t tell you what these birds are, but here`s a few picture from the day

  

In the second picture he is demonstrating how they do the banding and what they check when they do the banding.  He would measure the wing span and estimate how old the bird was, sometimes there was already a band on the bird so they would record that also as it gives further information about the bird.  He also taught a few of the kids how to hold the bird so it would not be hurt and would not hurt them.

  

After we went through the bird banding intro we spent the rest of the morning wandering the park and looking and watching different birds … at least that`s what the kids were suppose to be doing … most of them spent more time collecting rocks and shells on the beach and do anything but look for birds. 

Rebecca with her friends Alanah and Taylor, who were in her group.

Sitting by the lake

 

Climbing the sand dunes

 

We received rain and rain and rain and rain and rain … and did I mention rain? this spring.  And each time it came down it came down in buckets.  It had been the plan to play baseball during the afternoon, but it was far, far too wet for this as much of the grassy areas were full of little ponds/lakes and while I did make it through all of them dry, there were enough of them where I was beginning to wonder if the water was going to go over the top of my rubber boots.  To say it was wet would be an understatement!  Instead of playing baseball we ended up walking around the park for a while longer in the afternoon … by that time the kids, as well as the parents, had had enough of bird watching and were mostly just playing and fooling around.  I got my exercise that day anyways!