Winter Wednesday- Birds- Week 8

A hawk we saw on a drive during the week.

Somehow we have fallen behind in our Winter Wednesday and Outdoor Hour Challenges!! But we are catching up. This week for our Winter Wednesday on Birds we decided to learn about the only kind of bird we have seen at our bird feeder: the House Finch. Our bird feeder has issues, but we are working on solving them, so we hope to see more types of birds in the future.

The house finches come to our feeder in the morning, around breakfast time, and are easily scared off by kids clamoring at the glass to see them. That is the extent of our observations this week, though we have seen them feeding from wild sunflower plants on our nature walks in the past. For a coloring page, I borrowed the purple finch page from the Cornell coloring book, as it very closely resembles the House Finch.

Austin, age 7:

Nyah, age 6:
Today we visited a small local museum-- John Hutchings Museum in Lehi, UT. I especially wanted to visit because of their bird egg display which fits in with our other science lessons. They have a great free lesson on bird eggs at their website, which we modified and used last week. We had a good time comparing the eggs with each other- size, shape, color, eggs laid in nest vs. those laid on ground. The display included eggs, nests, and stuffed birds. I find stuffed birds and animals a little weird and interesting at the same time.

Eggs:

House Finch Nest:

Another House Finch Nest:

Nyah's Favorite Eggs- American Robin

Austin's Favorite Eggs- Golden Eagle

Smallest- Hummingbird

Biggest- Ostrich in middle, Emu to right, Rhea to left

Part of display:

Another part of display:

There was also a very interesting insect display,

and the kids loved the Owl butterfly: