Owls & Crows & Swallows- Oh My!!

We have been taking the last couple weeks off from "school," so we haven't been doing the nature challenges as laid out, but we have had some wonderful birding experiences we want to share with everyone.

We have made several more visits to our "Owl Tree," but it has been a week or so since we last saw the owls there. I've been thinking they were owlettes, and have now moved out of the nest. In any case, we miss them.

During a daytime visit we decided to venture under the "Owl Tree," and what a sight! Bird feathers and legs, various bones and animals skulls, a rabbit leg with attached rabbit foot (making my childhood rabbit's foot now seem a little creepy), and owl pellets.
We collected a few owl pellets and took them home. I admit they sat in a container on the counter for a few days before I worked up the courage for us the further investigate.

Digging in!! Despite the provided "tools" (plastic utensils and rubber gloves) my kids just dug in- literally with their hands.
The owl pellets had a nice variety- vertebrae pieces of different sizes, the jaw of some rodent with teeth intact, and plenty of other little bones.
Some of the feathers my kids collected- some we recognized as possibly belonging to a black-billed magpie, another as a possibly starling, and we think the larger striped-looking ones belong to the owls.

We researched the Great Horned Owls on AllAboutBirds and WhatBird, as well as reading the story about them in the Burgess Bird Book (Chapter 45- Peter Sees Two Terrible Feathered hunters). The kids also decided to do a journal page, and they included a poem I found online:

SILENCE is a great
horned owl on a hunt.

Its deadly talons
on a branch, eyes
watching for prey
and then flies away.

We also watched a few youtube videos, the one my kids liked the best was of a Great Horned Owl being harassed by crows. Which made today's experience all the more interesting- as we were outside doing yard work (or playing with friends) a couple crows ventured into our neighborhood. We have many bird nests in our neighborhood- mourning doves, robins, starlings, & house finches- so it wasn't a surprise to see a group of birds working together to try to drive the crows away. In the picture below the crow is on the middle house, on the lower left edge of the far side of the roof. I hope you can click on it to see it better. Above it there are several birds who were diving at the crow.

In this video you can see the birds diving at the crow, and then my kids deciding to join in driving it away when I point out what is happening. Later when we were talking about it, they remembered reading about crows in the Burgess Bird Book (Ch. 17 More Robbers & Ch. 18 Some Homes in the Green Forest), where someone's eggs are taken by Blacky the Crow.

On a nature walk we took earlier this week by the river, we Came across a whole row of Barn Swallow nests. We watched the birds flying in and out with food for their young, and played in the water of course.

Video of the Barn Swallows

On a sadder note, the kids and friends came across a baby black-billed magpie who wasn't in its nest and who couldn't fly during our homeschool group park day. By the time I discovered what was going on the kids had moved it away from where they found it, half-a-dozen of them had held it or touched it, and they were trying to decide what they should do with it. Because it wasn't injured, I managed to convinve them that the best plan would be to return it to where they found it and leave it alone, which they willing did. Unfortunately, we later learned someone felt compelled to take it home and as a result it died. There was no guarantee the bird would have survived if left at the park, but I believe it would have a greater chance of surviving. This prompted a discussion in our family about what to do when you find/catch a wild bird (or any animal). Here is a great site that covers what we discussed: BirdingGuide- Bird Advice.

We have greatly enjoyed our break from school, but we are looking forward to our relaxed summer plans, which will mainly be our nature studies and reading great books.