Birding

Molly is looking at a snowy egret.

We went birding this week with our co-op group. We visited a nature preserve near the bay with a guide from the Audubon Society. She took our group on a little hike into the wetlands so see some birds.

Henry is spying on a Night Heron taking a nap in the weeds.

It is actually hard to see the birds in the pictures since I purposely pulled back and tried to put the kids in the pictures. But we saw a Snowy Egret, some cinnamon teal as well as mallard ducks, sand pipers, swallows, turkey vultures, and bunches of others. I believe the kids kept a count of all the different species they saw and they got up to 29.  That included the mocking bird and hummingbird we saw while waiting for the group to begin the walk.

Here are some American Avocet that were doing a little dance for us. Evidently it is breeding season and court by dancing.

Molly looking out over the Slough. Lots of coots and sand pipers down digging in the mud.

Here the kids are getting to touch and handle some wings of a barn owl that the ladies from the Audubon Society brought along.

Last night my husband and I watched a birding movie. My husband had put it on our Nexflix queue and the disk arrived yesterday by coincidence.  The Big Year is all about some men who are trying to see and count the most birds in one year.  It ended up being a much better movie than we anticipated.

So I had my fair share of birding yesterday.

Taking the Day off

We decided to get out today rather than do the usual school work. 

The weather was lovely. The sun was shinning but the path was shady.

There were lots of opportunities to climb on rocks and poke around in the water.

The reservoir was the perfect place for a little picnic lunch.

Henry found a banana slug and just had to pick it up.

Yes that is his peanut butter sandwich in his other hand.

Yum!

We really should take days off like this more often.

Outdoor Hour - Winter Tree Study - Box Elder

We headed out a few days ago to enjoy a break in the storm and decided it was time to look at our tree again for our Outdoor hour. We looked at our Box Elder in the Fall and now needed to see what changes we could see now that we are in the thick of Winter. For us winter isn't snow it is rain. The past week or so has brought plenty of that!
Here is our Box Elder. It doesn't have any leaves left on it.
There are a few clumps of seeds still clinging onto it and the kids immediately went to work pulling them off and watching them twirl through the air. The wind was a little too strong, since another storm was moving in. The seeds didn't float and twirl nearly as much as they did when there was only a slight breeze.
Our attention quickly shifted to a nearby tree.
We could hear a lot of chirping coming from this tree nearby and we turned to see a tree filled with birds. Robins, mocking birds, and finches (as well as others, I am sure, this is just what I recognized) were all gathered in this one tree. We watched them flit around the tree gathering berries. We think that is what attracted them. The tree is one of the few that has leaves left on it and it has little purplish berries on it.

Sophie tried to walk up to the tree to see better but the birds quickly took flight. We watched them scatter. Then when we moved away from the tree a way and we watched as the birds all seemed to return. The birds kept us entertained for quite awhile and we lost interest in looking at our Box Elder.

I guess when we come back in a few months for a look it will be decked out in its Springtime leaves it will be more interesting.

Outdoor Hour - Cattails in the Winter

We headed out side for a nature walk this week. Before we get rain, I figured we needed to get out.

My kids never seem to forget the things we have already studied or looked at. They love to point out the plants or things they see along the way. Sophie wanted to pick a bunch of this minor's lettuce so we could add it to our salad at dinner. Knowing that this is a trail a lot of people use to walk their dogs, I decided not to. But I was happy to see that she remembers the plant and that it is edible.
The purpose of our walk this week we headed out to look at Cattails again. We looked at them in the Fall and now we went back to the same place again to see what has changed in the last few months.
In the early autumn, the grass all around the little stream was dry. Now everything, thanks to a few good rain storms, looked green. What has changed, is that the cattail stalks, that were green are now all yellow. It isn't because of lack of water. There has been tons of water.
Picking off the cattail was pretty easy and the kids had a great time tearing them apart. This is my kids favorite part of cattails.
This time we took a moment to look at the stalk after all the seeds and fluff was pulled off. It was still soft and had lots of little hairs.
Then of course we had to go scatter those seeds some more so that there will be more cattails for next time.
They especially liked to watch the fluff float down the stream.
On the walk back we spotted some signs of Spring already. These should be popping open in a few months. We are going to have to walk back this way to see them.

What a refreshing walk. I really need to make sure we take these walks more often.

Outdoor Hour - Fall Weather

We have been spending a lot of time outside recently. Everyday we go out to the cul-de-sac and ride bikes. Since Ian is now a two wheeler and looked a little big for his old bike, we got him a new one that is a better fit for him. So every day we have to go out and practice riding. Henry is happily riding around on the old one with the training wheels back on. While the kids ride around I get to enjoy the lovely Fall weather.

Here in California we have been having some really Fall like weather. It is actually cold enough to want or need a sweatshirt or light jacket. My kids still seem to think they can get away with shorts but for the most part it is feeling like Autumn. The trees are loosing their leaves and the kids love to ride through them. The wind has picked up and whips around chilling us, making us think we need a thicker jacket or maybe even gloves. But the most fun part of the weather we have had recently is the clouds.

We have had skies full of clouds lately.

Big billowy ones that, we sometimes think, may be full of rain. At other times they are just whispy stratus clouds decorating the sky. Which ever we are given that day, we seem to take a few moments to really watch and enjoy.

While the kids ride their bikes around, I sit with the baby and watch the wind dance around through the trees. Often one of the kids will take a break from their ride and sit down with me for a few moments. We will both watch the clouds roll across the view, or we listen to the birds that still flutter about. They will often give Molly a little eskimo kiss with a cold red nose before heading back out for another race around the circle.

Fall weather really is a beautiful thing.

Outdoor Hour - Stop at the Oak

We take a lot of "walks" around the block. My kids don't usually like to actually walk. They always want to take their scooters or ride their bikes. They still stop along the way to look at, watch, pick, or examine different things. Lately I have been pushing the baby in a stroller and I find myself saying things like "don't go too far ahead" or "stay where I can see you". I realized today I can give much more specific instructions and my kids know exactly what I mean. Today I used phrases like "Stop at the skipper butterfly garden" , "don't go past the Morning Glories" or "stop at the big oak tree". We have become so acquainted with our neighborhood that the kids know exactly where these phrases are describing.

So today while the kids waited for me to catch up to them at the oak tree. I snapped this photo.

The boys were looking at a tree stump that is being pulled out while Sophie is gathering acorns which are all over the ground around this tree. When I finally reached them the boys were excited to tell me about the stump with all the roots showing. Sophie told me about the squirrels that must have munched some of these acorns.

We took a moment to look at the leaves of the oak tree which were very spikey. These should help us identify which kind of oak tree this is. (When I got home I looked it up and it is a Coastal Live Oak, I think).

As we continued on our walk the kids also pointed out a few other things they found of interest. They noticed the citrus trees and the changing color of the fruit. The lemons, grapefruit and oranges all turning from green to their usual looking colors. They are headed toward ripeness.

Henry pointed these mushrooms out to me. They are quite large and he wanted to kick them and break them up. But I kept him from doing this so we could touch them and examine them a little closer. Sophie didn't want anything to do with them. I guess I have somehow instilled a real fear of touching mushrooms into her. She thinks any wild mushroom we see is poison.
I tried to tell her as long as we wash our hands after touching them we should be alright.

So we had a nice walk and I now have a better way to keep my kids from riding too far ahead of me as we go around the block. I just need to use the "landmarks" that they know and have learned on our many trips around the block. Why didn't I think of this sooner!

For Some Reason it is Different!

Today I took the kids on a hike. Every week some of our friends have been going on different hikes in the area. We really enjoyed these hikes last spring and summer and the kids have asked when we would be going again. I have purposely not told the kids about them because I just didn't think I would make it up those steep climbs which these hikes often are. Today's hike was one that I knew was flat and not that long and they kids had heard about the hike from a conversation they overheard and were determined to go. I figured this was a hike I could do. I do make it to the gym 3 times a week to do the stair stepper or something. Somehow hiking in the hot sun with three complaining kids was a big difference. I am so tired and worn out after only our short little hike.

Sophie and Ian were actually fine, at least on the way there. They kept up with their friend and made it to the little farm, which was our destination. Henry on the other hand complained and whined about being too tired of walking and of course wanted to be carried. There was no way I was going to carry him so I got to listen to his crankiness the whole way while holding his hand which was all I could offer him.

The kids did enjoy looking at the animals at the farm, as well as getting to run around a bit with their friends and have a snack.

The walk back was a whole lot worse than the walk to the farm. Now all three kids were complaining about the heat and about how tired they were. I was really tired too and couldn't wait to get back to the car. For some reason they always seemed to sit down and pout when we were out in the hot sun and couldn't understand why when we got to the shade I would stop everyone and pass around the water bottles.


I tried really hard to distract them with all the beautiful nature around us. We saw so many birds. Three different kinds of bluebirds, some robins, hawks circling in the air and even a little family of quail with some little chicks.


This helped a bit during moments of the hike back. I don't really blame them. It was hot. Our temperatures were suddenly in the high 80's today rather then the mild 70's we had be enjoying. We were all sweating and tired and were happy to reach the car and our A/C for the drive home.

I don't think I am going to be doing any hiking again for a bit. At least until it cools off a little or after I loose this extra 20 pounds that I have been carrying around recently. I think I am going to have to stick to exercising at the Air conditioned YMCA where I get to tune out the world and listen to music or read a book rather than my cranky kids.

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Starting our Bird Focus

We started our Focus on Birds last week. Rather than jumping right into the Handbook of Nature study or a non fiction book about birds I picked up a great story book about birds Albert. After reading Albert the kids were all excited about learning more about cardinals and I just so happened to have a book about cardinals that I had borrowed from the library. I also broke out a coloring book of all the state birds and we counted how many states have the cardinal as their state bird. We then discussed what our California state bird is. We don't see either Cardinals or Quail in our neighborhood so of course we talked about what birds we do see. Since we almost always have a bird feeder outside our front window we are well acquainted with the House sparrow and once in awhile we see a House finch.
We then went on a walk around our block to see what other birds we could see. We could see and hear a lot of Crows in the trees they often sounded like they were talking back and forth. Somehow I forgot to take a picture of them. I think we are going to have to focus on them next week since we have so many of them around. We saw a lot of pigeons too.

We could hear a lot more birds chirping away in the bushes but we couldn't see most of them.We did try to peek into the bushes to see them but they quickly scattered. We did see a few clumps of twigs wedged in the bushes that must be a nest. I think they are sparrows like we living in our carport and visiting our bird feeder. We needed a new feeder since our last one was rather weather beaten due to all the rain and wind we have had recently. (It was being held together with tape). We actually put up two new feeders. And both were filled at the beginning of the week and a few days later......
this is all there is in each of the feeders. We have had quite a few birds visiting.

Also as part of our focus on birds I decided to also learn a little about John James Audubon. I picked up a number of picture book biographies about Audubon. Today after reading one of these books Sophie decided she needed to give drawing birds a try so we broke out some field guides and other books and she set to work and I decided to join her.


Here is my drawing of a Mocking bird. One of the birds we see all the time in our neighborhood. They are hard to get a picture of however. I am glad the field guides had a good picture of one.

Here is Sophie's drawing of Humming birds. We saw some on our walk yesterday. They sure loved the bottle brush bush so she added a bottle brush to her drawing.

We are enjoying our focus on birds. We listen and look for birds all the time. Sophie spots different ones all the time. I am showing her how to look them up in the different field guides we have collected. It will be a fun few weeks as we take some time to study each of the different birds in our neighborhood.


I know we are supposed to look for Robins, Cardinals or the House Finch as our Challenge for the next few weeks. We don't usually see Robins around our neighborhood but do see them as some of the parks we visit so we are going to have to make sure we go to those parks and hope some robins are about. We don't get cardinals where we live so we will have to content ourselves with books about cardinals. We do see a House Finch every once in awhile visit our feeder so we will have to keep a close eye to see if they come around. We haven't seen them a long time.