Archives for July 2020

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-tanagers

Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide (riverhouses.org/books). It’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule throughout the year.

This week’s birds (two different groups) are the tropical Tanagers (pages 484–487) and the peculiar genus Spindalis (pages 484–485).

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these weekly overviews is just to treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes every Friday looking at all the interesting birds they may see one day. With that, your little lesson is done.

If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here are the bird guide’s introductions to this week’s groups, written in the customary telegraphic style:

“TANAGERS — Family Thraupidae. A large colorful highly varied Neotropical family, mostly frugivorous. Species: 371 World, 5 N.A. [North America; the bird guide has a typo here: it says “51” instead of “5”]“

“SPINDALIS — Genus Spindalis. Four Caribbean species of uncertain taxonomic placement to family. Species: 4 World, 1 N.A.“

When you’re training your young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their bird guide some of the first questions any naturalist would ask about a new group — about the Tanagers, for example. How many species? (371 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (5 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail, showing that these are for the most part tropical birds that just barely make across the southern border into the U.S.) What are their distinctive features? (A large and diverse group, colorful, mostly frugivorous, and so on.) (And “frugivorous” is certainly a wonderful word, isn’t it — be sure to send someone to your homeschool dictionary to look that one up!) 🔎

Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, for the Tanager family, why not investigate the tiny curve-billed Bananaquit (page 484).

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guide — can your students tease it out? How big is the Bananaquit? (4½ inches long: a very small bird!) What is its scientific name? (Coereba flaveola.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

Bananaquits are tiny, flower-loving, nectar-drinking tropical birds that are native to Central America and the Caribbean and occasionally turn up in southern Florida. Their yellow and black plumage just hints at the incredible diversity of color found in the Tanager family in tropical South America.

For a second species this week, take a look at the peculiar Western Spindalis (page 484), another tropical species that occasionally makes it into southern Florida.

In your bird guide, you’ll see the technical designation “Incertae sedis” at the beginning of the Spindalis entry. That’s Latin for “Of uncertain position” — in other words, ornithologists aren’t entirely sure what these birds are. Are they Tanagers? Are they Emberizid Sparrows? Are they something else entirely? As in any area of science, there are some questions about the family tree of birds that don’t yet have clear answers, and the placement of this odd genus is one of those questions.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that is near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore.

In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present a specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We also hope to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.

What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes have you been making in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations on the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season. 🐦

❡ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (riverhouses.org/books) (pages 6–13) explains a little bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book — why not have your students study it as a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts of a bird (pages 10–11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores. 🦉

❡ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books) as a nature reference, but a comprehensive dictionary will define and explain many of the standard scientific terms you will encounter in biology and natural history, although it will not generally contain the proper names of species or other taxonomic groups that aren’t part of ordinary English. (In other words, you’ll find “flamingo” but not Phoenicopterus, the flamingo genus.) One of the most important things students should be taught to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand them and remember their meaning. 📖

❡ Come, here’s the map: Natural history and geography are deeply interconnected. One of the first questions you should teach your students to ask about any kind of animal or plant is, “What is its range? Where (in the world) does it occur?” Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent world atlas that will help your students appreciate many aspects of biogeography, the science of the geographical distribution of living things. 🌎

❡ State birds: None of the birds covered this week are United States state birds, but the Bananaquit is the official bird of the territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Puerto Rican Spindalis (not shown in your bird guide but very similar to the Western Spindalis) has been proposed as the official bird of Puerto Rico. 🇺🇸 🇻🇮 🇵🇷

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts for homeschool naturalists. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us! You can also add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅