Going to the birds

Grab your flock, take a walk, and explore the world of feathered friends

Story and photos by Matt Lea

With the scorching days of summer being replaced by the cool breezes of fall, now is a great time to start thinking about interesting and economical ways for your family to enjoy being outside and seeing the sights and colors of fall. One easy and fun activity your and your kids can participate in together is bird watching.
Forget whatever preconceptions you may have about bird watching—there’s a reason it’s one of America’s largest pastimes and a multi-billion-dollar business. Still, most people never take the opportunity to enjoy or appreciate the importance of birds, each of which has unique colors, habitats, diets and characteristics.

Getting started

There are many ways for a family to enjoy bird watching. The first and most important thing is to purchase a field guide from a local bookstore. There are several excellent ones produced by wildlife organizations including the Audubon Society, National Geographic, or the Peterson Series. Any of these will cost around $25.
A field guide will usually offer an introductory chapter discussing how to use the book, why birds are important, and how they affect local habitats. They will generally have a colored photograph or detailed drawing (or both) of each bird for your area. They will discuss their migratory patterns, their feather colors, and which ones are native to your specific area. Make sure you find a field guide specific to our area of the country.
The next step is to talk with your children and discuss why birds are important. They help maintain insect populations, rejuvenate forests and wetlands, and offer beautiful melodies and songs for us to enjoy. Their empty nests and foraging holes provide homes for raccoons, squirrels and other animals, not to mention other birds.
Finally, spending time looking at the pictures in the field guide and discussing various species, starting with the birds that are probably easy to find around your own yard, like cardinals, wrens and robins.

A walk in the woods

Once you feel comfortable with the field guide, get a pair of binoculars. Binoculars come in all shapes, optical strengths, and prices—an avid hobbyist can easily spend upwards of $1,000 on a pair—but the average person or family entering the world of bird watching can find a good pair of binoculars at Wal-Mart or Target for about $30 to $50. I won’t lie: High-quality, high-magnification binoculars do help make seeing birds much easier, but they are definitely not mandatory.
Now pick a beautiful fall Saturday or Sunday morning or late afternoon, round up the kids, and head to your nearest local park or wildlife management area to go for a leisurely stroll or hike.
Take your time, and make a game of looking for birds. Use your field guide to distinguish different ones, and consider giving little prizes to the child who finds the first robin or hears the first woodpecker pecking on a tree. (To avoid upset, make sure all your children get some sort of prize.) Remember, on some trips you may never see a particular bird, so keep the game flexible. Take this time to show your children the little things in nature, like unusual plants and insects you find along the way, and offer praise when they point out something interesting.

While you walk, make sure to listen as well as look for birds. You can go to a website like LearnBirdSongs.com to learn their individual songs and calls, but be mindful: The Northern Mockingbird (the state bird of Tennessee) can mimic over a hundred different bird calls, so they can always fool you.

Dinner and a show

If hiking isn’t for you, or if a disability prevents it, consider setting up a bird garden and feeding station in your yard, near a window. Feeding birds is a great way for kids to learn about them and how they are different. Some wild birds prefer to eat on the ground, some from feeders, and some, like hummingbirds, suck nectar from a flower or nectar feeder. Others are primarily insectivorous, meaning they usually only eat tiny insects.

Having a feeder gives children the chance to have responsibility for cleaning and filling it, and teaches the value of ownership. You can even use it as a reminder to instill good eating habits: “Remember, the birds have to have a clean feeder with fresh seed to stay healthy, just like you have to eat healthy to grow big and strong.”
Some feeders are made for suet; others are made for sunflower or safflower seed, thistle, or various blends. For a great show, add some peanuts to a dish for woodpeckers, and watch how tufted titmice will fly down to the feeder, grab a sunflower seed, and then peck the seed open against a nearby tree. This is a great way to show children how animals are unique and have particular ways of doing things, just like people.

The best nest

My favorite way to enjoy birding is to install nest boxes to encourage birds to nest in our yard. My wife, Sharon, and I have several nest boxes in our yard, attracting many types of birds, including woodpeckers, wrens, titmice, and bluebirds. You can buy a nest box in a store or online, but if you have some wood and a hammer, saw and nails, you can easily make one yourself—a great Saturday afternoon project to share with your kids.
Installing a few nest boxes doesn’t just help the birds. It also benefits your kids by encouraging them to nurture nature and by letting them see the process of life, full-circle. There is nothing more fulfilling than watching a mother and father bluebird parent a nest and then watching their babies learn to fly.
Most nest boxes open on the side so you can watch the babies develop. It is a beautiful process. Just remember: Nature isn’t always sweet and gentle. Sometimes, other birds do destroy the nests, so you need to be prepared to talk with your kids about some of the sad things that do happen in nature.

Back to nature

With a little research online or in books you can purchase or checkout from the library, you and your children can learn a lot about birds in a short amount of time. The fun of learning is you can do it with your children, together, as a family.
So the next time you are wondering what to do on a beautiful, fall Saturday afternoon, don’t take the kids to a movie or to roam the mall. Take them out bird watching, even if it’s just visiting a pond to feed the ducks that leftover bread from last week’s bologna sandwiches. Trust me, there is something about children and feeding ducks; they’ll never forget the experience, and neither will you. Some of my happiest childhood memories were spent with my parents at the duck pond in Red Bank. According to my parent, I once enjoyed the ducks so much I ran into the pond after them, quacking like a duck!
So gather your flock—and possibly a towel—and head to the park. There are birds squawking somewhere, and they’re just waiting for you and your family.

Author Bio:

Matt Lea is founder of the Greater Chattanooga Aviculture Society, legislative liaison for the Southeast Tennessee Aviculture Society, and a member of the Chattanooga Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society. He is one of five international scholarship recipients for the 2009 Ornithological Study Program offered by Cornell University Lab of Ornithology and the owner of Take Flight-Chattanooga. He and his wife are avid bird watchers and parrot owners and enjoy teaching others about birds.