Sounds of Spring

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The Sounds of Spring

Every spring we’re reminded of the joy of being alive, and life’s drive to survive and thrive. Can we join the celebration by opening our eyes, ears and hearts to the everyday miracles around us? 

Birds in Spring

Local birds are very busy in spring – finding a mate, making a nest, and getting ready to raise a family.  We are surrounded by an absolute symphony of spring birdsong, as birds (mostly males) sing to attract a mate and establish their territory.

Try training your ears in very early spring to recognize some of the most common early songsters in the Peterborough area.  Here are a few sound files from the excellent Cornell Lab of Ornithology to help you get started:

There’s an amazing resource to help you recognize nearby bird songs, especially as more and more migrants return, and the soundscape gets complex and sometimes confusing!  Try downloading the Merlin Bird ID app on your cell phone, and select ‘Sound ID’.  It will help you listen and point out sounds it recognizes, along with images of the bird that you can click for more information.

The Pathway Project has also created some useful resources for beginning birders.  Check out our ‘Common Spring Birds of Peterborough‘ checklist, which accompanies the ‘Common Winter Birds of Peterborough‘ checklist (these winter residents are still here in spring).  Here’s a recorded workshop for young children that combines the sounds and images of some of our common spring birds to help you get started.

Get outside, tune up your ears, and see how many new feathered friends you can make this spring!

Common Birds of PTBO

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COMMON BIRDS OF PETERBOROUGH

These are birds that are residents or have migrated back to southern Ontario in the spring. Use this checklist along with the Pathway Common Winter Birds checklist to see how many different birds you can find on your walk today. To learn more, check out this website, allaboutbirds.org

SPRING EDITION

DOWNLOAD HERE

WINTER EDITION

Ever wonder what feathered friends in your neighbourhood stay here all winter? The winter months still offer a bright array of cheerful bird friends, and most of these will be happy to visit bird feeders. Can you find all 12 of these common winter birds of Peterborough? Use this free downloadable PDF as a checklist.

DOWNLOAD HERE

To learn more about these birds, check out the website, allaboutbirds.org

Kim’s Spring Activity List

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Kim's Spring Activity Guide

Our Outdoor Activity Consultant, Kim, has rustled up some exciting Spring Activities to keep our Pathway community busy!

1. Kites

learningliftoff.com

As spring can be breezy, it’s a great time to learn about wind and make and fly a kite
 

 2. Help the Birds 

Encourage birds to nest around your property by providing mud and nesting materials.

 

MUD

  • Choose a spot at the edge of a flower or vegetable garden to establish a mud hole. Use a hose or a bucket of water to wet the earth.
  • Squish the soil using your hands, a stick or a shovel, until it reaches a muddy consistency.
  • Try to find clay soil. Don’t worry if the mud contains small bits of grass or other plant fibres. 

NEST LINING MATERIALS

  • Stuff a mesh onion bag with materials such as dead twigs, pine needles, leaves, feathers, moss, dry grass (as long as it’s chemical-free), strips of bark, and plant fluff from plants such as cattails or cottonwood.
  • Hang the bag from a clothesline or tree branch in your backyard.
  • Some materials that were previously recommended for nesting are now considered unsafe. Do not provide hair (human or animal), string, yarn or loose bits of thread, as birds can become entangled in these materials. Likewise, do not provide pieces of felt or cloth, dryer lint, plastic, tinsel, cellophane or aluminum foil; these can be choking hazards or cause internal blockage.

3. Create a Wild Bee Sanctuary

For a detailed outline visit this link at the David Suzuki Organization 

  • Fill your yard with flowers
  • Plant native
  • Go organic
  • Add water  
 

b. Make a Bee Bath

Use a shallow plate and place it at the ground level where you’ve noticed bee activity. Place a few flat stones in the plate to create landing pads or islands and safe places to crawl out should they fall in. Add fresh water but don’t submerge the stones. Birds and butterflies will use it, too. Replace the water every few days to eliminate mosquito larvae… more here

Make a bee home

Honeybees and bumblebees live in social colonies, but most wild bee species are solitary. About two-thirds of solitary nesting bees use tunnels in the ground to lay their eggs. About one-third use hollowed-out plant stems or tunnels in dead trees or fallen logs… Want to discover the best homemade housing you can make for bees in your backyard? Read more here

4. Plant a Pollinators Garden 

Check out this amazing resource from Bee City Canada on how to create a habitat. and Follow it up with the Planting for Pollinators blog from Kidsgardening.org 


5. Create a Spring Checklist 

With your kids, make a checklist of things that make you think of spring. Go on a hike in the forest, check off all of the things that you see and feel on your list. Try to ensure that the list is multi-sensory, so things like feeling the warmth of the sun and different smells of the seasons are also on the list. Feel free to add to the lists as you are walking and noticing more things.

6. Colours of Spring

Pick up some paint chips from a hardware store. On your outdoor adventure, hand them out to your kids and see if they can find matches to many different colours. They may think it’s impossible, but this gets them to really look at items to find a match. Remember to look up, blues often match the sky!

If paint chips are not available to you, crayons will work too.

7. Meet a Tree in your Neighbourhood

Have your kids pick a tree that you really get to know over time. They can get to know it in so many different ways (draw, take bark rubbings, look with a magnifier, or use a camera). In the spring, they will be looking for the buds starting to explode into leaves. Most people think that buds form in the spring, but with careful observation, you will see that buds are actually on the tree all winter!

8. Disc Golf

Get your family involved in this fun, active, burgeoning sport. Peterborough has three easily accessible, free courses for you to enjoy. The courses are at the north end of the Riverview Park and Zoo, TASS, and Hamilton Park just south of Jackson Park. In outlying areas of Peterborough, there is one at Mount Julian Viamede and Ennismore Waterfront Park. Or, you can make your own course anywhere you would like by simply identifying objects as your targets. All you need is a frisbee, or a disc, and a good arm! www.peterboroughdiscgolf.ca

9. Take a Hike

Home Sweet Home: Build or install a nest box this spring!

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Home Sweet Home:

Build or install a nest box this spring!

Here’s a great spring activity to try at home or at school.  Nest boxes provide wonderful habitat for many kinds of birds, and having avian families in your yard gives hours of enjoyment watching these feathered miracles.

In nature, holes in trees are prime real estate for wildlife.  In fact, many kinds of birds need these holes, called ‘cavities’ for building their nests and raising their young.  Especially in urban areas, dead or dying trees are usually removed, leaving a scarcity of nesting sites for our bird neighbours.

Luckily, nest boxes are quite easy to build with a few simple tools and some understanding of what birds need for protection from weather and predators.  While there are many specialized types of nest boxes for specific species, a good basic design is suitable for many small birds such as chickadees, wrens, and nuthatches.

Here are some basic guidelines:

  • nest boxes need enough space for a nest full of baby birds and access for parents
  • the correct size of the entrance hole is important; it should be near the top of the box;
  • nest boxes must be cleaned out every year, so make sure you can open up the box, and reseal it safely
  • don’t put a perch on your box; birds don’t need it, but perches can help predators reach the young birds
  • don’t paint or put a finish on your box; birds prefer untreated, natural wood
  • provide ventilation and drainage; a few small holes near the top provide ventilation, and small holes in the floor allow moisture to drain

  • use a predator guard to protect the entrance hole from being chewed by squirrels or other mammals who would destroy the eggs or young birds; a metal plate or piece of thick wood are effective (see examples)
  • install securely at least 6 feet from the ground; avoid nailing into trees – a pole or post are ideal

 

Cornell Ornithology Lab has great illustrated guidelines

 

Here are some plans for a simple nest box you can build from a 4 ft. piece of 1 X 6″ lumber

Chickadee Nest Box Plans from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Note:  Entrance hold diameter is 1″ for House Wrens; Use 1 1/8″ diameter for Black-Capped Chickadees; 1 1/4″ for White-Breasted and Red-Breasted Nuthatches

Bird of the Month: Black-capped Chickadee

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Bird of the Month:  Black-capped Chickadee

While so many birds are flying to warmer places to spend the winter, the hardy little Black-capped Chickadee is preparing to stay with us all winter.

Chickadees are cheerful little birds that travel in flocks and seem to be always on the move. They have a black cap and bib, with white cheeks. They’re one of the easiest birds to attract to a winter bird feeder – a feast of black oil sunflower seeds will keep them happily visiting you all winter.  You can hear their ‘chick-a-dee-dee-dee’ call all year ‘round, but on warmer days in winter, their slower ‘Dee dee’ song sounds like they’re saying ‘Honey!’ or ‘Hey, sweetie!’ That call shows that they’re feeling frisky, and thinking of warmer days and the breeding season.

Black-capped Chickadees are very friendly, curious little birds, and with a bit of patience and standing very still, you can often entice them to come and take a seed from your outstretched hand.  What a memorable moment, especially for children, to be visited by these lighter-than-air feathered friends!  If you’re working on Landmark 12 with young children (learn 5 birds in your neighbourhood), the Black-capped Chickadee is sure to be one of your neighbours.

Bird of the Month

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Bird of the Month:

Meet the Yellow Warbler!

Yellow WarblerSummer is a perfect time to go searching for new feathered friends. This perky ray of sunshine is quite common in our area in spring and summer. Incredibly, the tiny Yellow Warbler flies all the way from South and Central America every spring to find places to breed in North America. Look for reddish streaks on the breast (males), a black beak and sweet black eyes in an unmarked face. Listen for its song – it sounds like it’s saying “Sweet, sweet, I’m so sweet…”

Yellow warblers feed mostly on insects, and can be found around woodland edges, streamsides and brushy areas.  Look for them in late spring and early summer, as they often start their long migration south during the month of August.  To learn the yellow warbler’s song, check out the Cornell birding website, ‘All About Birds.’  Getting to know the birds around you is part of LANDMARK 12 (Who Else Lives in Your Neighbourhood?).

Don’t be fooled by another common yellow bird – the American Goldfinch.  Male goldfinches are also bright yellow in the summer, but they have a black cap and black wings.  Goldfinches stay here for the winter, and are commonly seen all year at bird feeders.

For a bigger challenge for older children and youth, try reporting your bird sightings to eBird to help track trends in bird populations worldwide.  This is LANDMARK 22  (Become a Citizen Scientist).  Check out the Merlin website to help you learn to identify the birds you see.  Watching birds is great fun, and a good focus for walks outdoors.

Photo by Kyle Dueck

Winter Games

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Winter Games

Getting to Know Your Local Birds!

Did you know that the average child recognizes hundreds of corporate logos but fewer than 10 local plants or animals?  Getting to know your ‘neighbourwood’ is an important first step in connecting with the natural world.

While some local birds fly south for the winter, many stay around, and can be a focus for lots of winter sleuthing, especially if there’s a birdfeeder nearby.  Here’s an activity that exercises the memory and observation skills, in preparation for going outdoors in winter, especially with Grade 1-2 children working on Landmark 12 (Getting to Know Local Plants and Animals).  Older children and adults can play too.

Winter Birds Memory Game

This idea is inspired by a Christmas gift of a game of birds from around the world, where the goal is to find matches of males and females of the same species.  This version has a simpler, more local focus, based on common winter birds in the Peterborough area.

Find pictures online of any of the following birds:

  • Black-capped chickadee
  • White-breasted nuthatch
  • Northern Cardinal
  • Blue Jay
  • Hairy Woodpecker
  • House Sparrow
  • Red-breasted nuthatch
  • Rock Pigeon
  • Goldfinch
  • European Starling

(if you know of others in your area, include them too)

Paste the pictures into a template of squares (2.5” to 3” are ideal), and make sure you have two copies of each picture.  Use card stock or bristleboard if possible, so you can’t see through the paper when they’re placed face-down.  Write the name of each bird on each square.

Bird Game Template

TO PLAY:

Turn all the squares face-down on a table or other flat surface.  Every player turns over two cards, saying the names of the birds on each card, then turning the cards face-down again.  The goal of the game is to remember the location of each card that was turned over, so you can turn up a matched pair when it’s your turn.  If you find a matched pair, you take them off the table and keep them.  Whenever you find a pair, you get an extra turn.  This game can be played by various numbers of people, but 2 to 5 people are best, so you don’t have to wait too long for your turn.

To make the game more permanent, you can laminate the cards so they’ll last through many games.  For older children, you could make sets of local flowers, animals, insects or trees.  The memory challenge of the game is a great mental workout for all ages!