Post Archives: Homeschool Natural History

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-bird-behavior

The spring bird migration season is over, but there’s plenty to observe and record with your students as the summer proceeds — and you can contribute to science along the way.

If you keep track of the birds you see in your backyard or in a local natural area using the free eBird website from Cornell University — something we always recommend to homeschoolers — be sure to note important behaviors you see at this time of year, behaviors related to nesting and reproduction.

When you enter your daily bird list, eBird gives you the option to enter a “Breeding Code.” These codes document the fact that a particular species is breeding (or probably breeding) in your area, and they help scientists to monitor the status of regional bird populations. The different Breeding Codes appear in a drop-down menu right on the page as you’re entering your data.

Even if you don’t see (for example) a nest with eggs, there are many other ways that breeding can be confirmed. Early in the season it’s common to see birds carrying nest material — that’s confirmation that nest-building is underway. And later in the season you will often see parent birds feeding their young for several days after they have left the nest — that’s clear evidence that eggs were laid and young were successfully fledged, even if the nest was never located. (That’s the code you see in my own record above.)

And if you have young photographers in your homeschool, be sure to put their developing talents to good use as well, and add images to your eBird records to document not only the presence of the birds you see, but also their summertime behaviors.

What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Homeschool Natural History posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 😊

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-accidentals 😊

May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses, and May is coming to a close. Down in my local riverside park the Song Sparrows are already feeding their first round of begging fledglings, and most of the May arrivals have settled in for the summer.

We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment, and each May we give it a little extra attention because so many birds are moving all across the North American continent. The wonderful BirdCast website (birdcast.info), sponsored by Cornell University, tracks the continent-wide pattern every year, but within that overall pattern there are always irregularities. If you have a homeschool science student interested in natural history, geography, or meteorology, those irregularities are great topics to investigate.

Every migration season, a small number of European birds will turn up somewhere in North America — we call them “accidentals” or “vagrants” — and understanding how and why that happens is an object of a lot of scientific research. Here’s a great little report to share with your science students this week on some of the accidentals that have recently appeared on North American shores:

• ➔ Recent European Vagrant Species in North America (birdcast.info)

The appearance of these accidentals is now understood to be (most often) associated with a meteorological condition called a “Greenland block” that produces unusual east-to-west weather flows across the North Atlantic. By combining studies of changing meteorological conditions with reports of accidental species occurrences (via eBird.org and other sources), we can begin to understand why, for example, a Eurasian Oystercatcher turned up in Newfoundland earlier this month, thousands of miles from its usual home.

What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉

❡ Homeschool birds: 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. 🐦

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Homeschool Natural History posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 😊

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-bird-songs 😊

May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses, so this month, why not try recording some bird songs on your smartphone. If you do a good job, you might win some cool educational prizes.

Cornell University is famous around the world for its Library of Natural Sounds, a unique collection of recordings of birds, mammals, insects, and all kinds of other creatures that make noises in nature. The first recording made for that collection, a singing Song Sparrow, was captured 90 years ago this month.

In honor of this grand audio anniversary, Cornell is inviting people to record a bird song this coming week, between 18–26 May 2019, and submit it online. All submissions will be entered into a drawing, and if your recording is selected as a winner, you could receive a set of professional sound recording equipment, a subscription to their online bird encyclopedia, or a $100 certificate for online nature classes. You can check on all the details and get some sound recording tips here:

• ➔ Snapshot of Sound: Let’s Hear the World Sing! (Cornell University)

Surely this is something a talented homeschool student should win, yes? I certainly think so!

What ornithological discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉

❡ 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, also 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. 🐦

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Homeschool Natural History posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 😊

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-ebird-charts 😊

May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses — we think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. But how can you find out what birds are present and migrating through your local area? A good bird guide will give you a general idea, but what about week by week in your specific state, county, or town?

For that information you can turn to the wonderful eBird.org website, sponsored by Cornell University. eBird is a big site with many features and services, and it will not only let you record your own bird observations, but will also show you summary data for any part of the country (or the world).

Suppose you’re a homeschooler in Minot, North Dakota (to select a random location). Minot is in Ward County, so if you use eBird’s geographical browsing tool you can navigate your way to the seasonal bar charts for Ward County, North Dakota. Here’s a sample of what they look like:

Can your students see how to interpret this chart? (That’s an important basic academic skill right there.) Each row represents a species of bird: Bobolink, Western Meadowlark, Eastern Meadowlark, and so on. The columns represent the weeks and months of the year, from January to December. The thickness of the green bars indicates how often each species is reported during a given week. For example: the first few Bobolinks begin to arrive during the first two weeks of May (where we are right now); they become more common by the end of the month and are regularly seen through June and July; and then by August and September they’re still present, but not as often reported. By the end of September they’re gone (except for an occasional stray).

So if you’re a homeschooler in Minot, North Dakota, the Bobolinks have just arrived in your vicinity, as have the Baltimore Orioles; in a few more days the Orchard Orioles will join them. Western Meadowlarks, Red-winged Blackbirds, and several other species arrived earlier in the season and by now have settled in for the summer.

But where can you go to see these birds? Switch to the map view in eBird, and you’ll get something like this — it’s this week’s map for Western Meadowlarks in the Ward County area:

This map shows all the Western Meadowlark observations that have been entered into eBird for this region of North Dakota. The red symbols stand for observations made the last 30 days; the blue symbols for observations older than 30 days. The larger symbols are eBird “hotspots” — public locations such as parks or wildlife refuges that anyone (including you and your students) can visit and explore.

But what if you don’t even know what a Western Meadowlark is? 😊 We do recommend an excellent bird guide for all homeschool families — printed books are often the best educational tools, especially for young people — but that information is also available online in eBird. If you click the species name in the bar chart, you’ll get a detailed profile that looks like this:

eBird is a wonderful resource that can become a regular part of your homeschool science and natural history studies. Bookmark it and give it a browse, and see what avian visitors are passing through your homeschool neighborhood this month. 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Homeschool Natural History posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 😊

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-migration-month 😊

The merry month of May has arrived, and May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses! 🦆

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.

But this is the season, and this is the month, when there are more birds moving than at any other time. One of the best ways to give your students a sense of the scale and scope of bird migration is with the wonderful BirdCast website (birdcast.info), sponsored by Cornell University.

Birdcast.info is a daily “weather” forecast, and the weather it predicts is the nightly level of bird migration across the United States. (Did you know that most birds migrate at night? It’s true!)

The colors on the nightly forecast maps show the expected intensity of migration across different parts of the country: red is more intense, blue is less intense. Although the seasonal timing of migration is generally governed by the photoperiod (the day-length), local variation in weather conditions can “bottle up” migrants for short periods, leading to heavy days and light days in any given region. Black areas on the forecast maps are zones of precipitation that are expected to block migrants from moving forward on any given night.

One of the most remarkable things available on the BirdCast website is live nightly migration tracking based on nationwide radar observations that see bird movements directly. As sunset moves from east to west across the country, the sky “lights up” with radar echoes of migrating birds — it’s quite dramatic.

Go to the live migration maps page to see these images in animated form.

Birdcast.info will help you and your students connect what you see in your local neighborhood with the grand pattern of migration that is taking place across the whole continent during this busy month of May.

What ornithological discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-birdcast 😊

(Editor’s note: This is the first post from our new nature correspondent, Horace the Otter, the River Houses mascot. Watch for more from Horace in the weeks to come.) 😊

Spring bird migration is underway across much of the United States, and to give your homeschoolers a window into what’s happening why not spend a few minutes this week exploring the wonderful birdcast.info website sponsored by Cornell University.

Birdcast.info is a daily “weather” forecast, and the weather it predicts is the nightly level of bird migration across the United States. (Did you know that most birds migrate at night? It’s true!) The earliest migrating species start moving each year as far back as February, with others joining in during March and April, and the greatest numbers moving north in May.

The birdcast.info website will show you the level of migration that’s expected across the country on any given night. The forecast for tomorrow night (Saturday night and Sunday morning), for example, shows moderate movement in the southeast and up the east coast, as well as along the south Pacific coast. Rain along the lower Mississippi will be blocking seasonal movements there.

As the spring proceeds you’ll see the level of migration intensify, with heavy movements up the Mississippi and across the Great Plains, and along the east and west coasts, all subject to local variation caused by daily weather conditions that can “bottle up” migrants for short periods.

In addition to its daily forecast maps, birdcast.info also produces live nightly migration images based on nationwide radar observations that see bird movements directly. As sunset moves from east to west across the country, the sky “lights up” with radar echoes of migrating birds — it’s quite dramatic.

Go to the live migration maps page to see these images in animated form.

Birdcast.info will help you and your students connect what you see in your local neighborhood with the grand pattern of migration that is taking place across the whole continent.

What natural observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉

❡ 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, also 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. 🐦

Although official (astronomical) spring doesn’t begin for another week, my local birds definitely know that spring is well on the way. Have you and your students seen and heard the signs of spring in your homeschool neighborhood?

Yesterday I went down to the local river at dawn (not my usual hour!) and the evidence was all around. Here’s my list:

• ➤ RJO’s Bird List for 14 March 2019 (ebird.org/view/checklist/S53803402)

A singing Song Sparrow was the first of the year, as was a Great Blue Heron that flew over, several Common Grackles, and a small line of Canada Geese. Are you keeping a list of the birds that you see in your homeschool backyard or local natural area? The beginning of spring is a great time to start!

What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉

❡ 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 (ebird.org) 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. 🐦