Birds

Boo’s Wolf Den has been working on earning the World Conservation Award.  His

project for this week was to chart the birds he sees during the week.  We decided to make the project a little easier for him and bought some birdseed from the PX.  For $2 and a Rubbermaid lid, we have a durable little bird feeder.  I would rather have a St Francis bird feeder, but this one works for now.

First we had the birdseed on our picnic bench, but Bip was able to climb up and sample some.  Boo was quite indignant about this, but Bip was no worse for the wear.  We moved the seed to a higher location, out of Bip’s reach, with the added benefit that it seems to attract more birds this way.

By far, the most frequent visitor to our yard has been a common sparrow.  We see the same little bird every day.  I think he and his mate are building a nest nearby.  We’ve seen mourning doves a couple of times and driving to church along the Potomac we spied seagulls.  Sunday morning, the male and female mallard who frequent our housing area were looking for breakfast in our front yard.  Today, this happy guy was partaking of the birdseed.  I hope he’ll be back.

We’ve had a lot of fun looking for birds and trying to identify them with the field guide.  While we’re pouring over the books, looking for the right bird, Bip will go over to the bookshelf and grab a different field guide, bring it to the living room, and sit and "read" it.  We were so surprised when he first did this.  The books are an unusual size and shape, but I didn’t think he ever noticed them, let alone knew where they were located.  But he wanted to do what we were doing and knew exactly where to find the guides. 

We were able to identify every bird we saw, except one.  It’s a little black bird with a yellow beak.  They seem to stay in flocks all over the base, snacking in the grass.  We couldn’t find it in the field guide.  I thought it was a European starling, but it is not iridescent.  An internet search proved fruitless.  Any ideas?

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