The "Celebrate Urban Birds!" Kit

A SNAPSHOT OF THE PAGE

The "Celebrate Urban Birds!" Kit

The poster features city birds in a whimsical urban setting with lots of practical information on the back about ways to create a bird-friendly green space in your neighborhood, threats to birds in cities, and how to attract birds.

The Silhouette Poster with cool facts, by Susan Spear

Learn to identify birds by looking at their shapes, This poster includes information (cool facts) about the 16 species we are tracking.

The Celebrate Urban Birds! data form.

Please take this data form out with you when you watch birds. Please enter your data online if possible or send us the form by mail!

Canada participants please download Data Form here.

Send us your data -- even if you saw none of the target birds!

"Zero means a lot"

To understand how green spaces affect birds, we must know where birds are, as well as where they aren't.

Imagine if everyone participating in the Celebration sent in their data... People of all ages and birdwatching abilities working together ... this could be the largest urban bird monitoring effort ever!

The Celebrate Urban Birds! Welcome Letter

This welcome letter has a wonderful bird identification guide on the back. Take this beautiful guide with you when you go out to watch birds!

 

Zero Means a Lot sticker

To highlight how important it is for participants to submit observations even when NO BIRDS are seen, we've created wonderful, colorful stickers. Each sticker is different! It is essential that participants let us know where the birds are seen as well as where they are NOT seen. You can wear these beautiful stickers or share them with others. Stickers are included in your kit. If you are downloading materials and would like a sticker (or a sheet of stickers) simply let us know by emailing urbanbirds@cornell.edu.Here is all you need to participate in Celebrate Urban Birds! Please feel free to download, copy, and share our materials with others!

Please register (for free).  We would like as many people as possible to participate in Celebrate Urban Birds and use the project resources.  The 10-minute bird observation is at the heart of the project and the kit materials support that 10-minute citizen science observation, but there are lots of other materials and resources on the web site. 

During the sign-up process you will be asked whether you'd like us to send you a kit or whether you prefer to download the materials from the web site. 

All the paper materials in the kit are listed below...just click on the links and you can download and print out the .pdf documents. 

During the sign up process you will be asked whether you are signing up as an individual or organization.  An individual can ask for one kit.  An organization can ask for more than one kit.  One kit can support a whole classroom or group that wants to do the Celebrate Urban Bird observation.  For more information about how to do the observation please click here.
If you have registered and received a kit before and would like another kit, you don't have to re-register.  Just send us a quick email to  urbanbirds@cornell.edu with the subject line
" I'm already in your data base but I'd like another kit because..."

Here's what is in the kit:  The Celebrate Urban Birds Poster, by Katie Yamasaki

Seed Packet

A packet of native sunflower seeds so you can plant them to provide food for birds.  Yes, birds eat seeds from flowers and weeds, so plant these seeds, grow the sunflowers, leave the blossoms on your sunflowers, let them mature and dry/  The flower petals will fall off, but the treasure is still there...the seeds.  The birds will come and find your flowers and eat the seeds right out of that flower.
We offer the  Celebrate Urban Bird kits for free so that everyone can participate. PLEASE MAKE A DONATION, if you can, so we can cover material printing and mailing costs.
Click here to make an online donation.
Or send a check to: Celebrate Urban Birds, Urban Bird Studies, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850

SOURCE: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/celebration/GettingStarted/kit

Herons and Egrets

No. 2574
HERONS AND EGRETS

by John H. Lienhard

Click here for audio of Episode 2574

Today, herons and egrets. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
I should be careful, talking about birds. I'm far from being one of those highly-informed bird people who knows the form and habits of every subspecies. I'm just reaching the point where I can do more than tell little brown birds from big white ones.
But my camera keeps informing me. Each time I study my day's catch on the computer screen, I find another creature I'd never heard of. Yet, despite the dazzling diversity out there, a year-round constant here on the Texas Coast is the heron. The heron, in its many forms, shapes our regional identity.
Heron is an umbrella term for bitterns, egrets, and many birds that are called herons. Herons generally have long necks, and generally fly with those necks folded in. In the air they look like stubby birds with deep chins. They usually wade the edges of waterways, picking up small fish or crustaceans. Still: I've watched them fly with necks outstretched. And I've watched them fish as gulls do -- flying low over water, scooping up prey in their bills.
By the way, it's an education to watch different water birds fishing. Hawks fly high until they see a fish near the surface, then they swoop down to snatch it in their talons. Cormorants swim on the surface, then dive like submarines to hunt their prey. Some ducks, like the lesser scaup, also do that. But most ducks just upend and fish with their tail-feathers pointed heavenward.
But back to herons: The great blue heron is the largest and most striking -- usually found alone with its seven-foot wingspan and gaunt grayish look. It stands in strong contrast to the white egrets, although the great white egret is almost as large. And my favorite is the less dramatic snowy egret.

Lots of snowies live on our gulf waterways, and I never tire of them -- so beautiful in their ever-changing appearance. Long black beaks and yellow feet frame the purest shining white plumage. On a cloudy day, you might find a group with their necks tucked in, standing in the reeds like monks in a Chinese lithograph. Or you'll find one stalking the inches-deep water on the concrete bayou apron, looking for small prey. During breeding season, snowy egrets spread their delicate plumage out in seductive sprays.

A century ago, that beauty almost led to their extermination. Snowy egret feathers were so prized for ladies hats, and egrets were so easy to hunt along the water's edge, that they almost vanished. Laws were finally passed to protect them, and now they thrive. Well, at least they do here in Houston. In other areas, their habitat dwindles. Here, our bayou system of water runoff sustains a fine home for them in the midst of a huge city.
And they really are magical birds. Mid-20th-century American poet Mary Oliver called a group of egrets,

A shower
of white fire!

She watched them in the shifting light and wrote,

... unruffled ...
they opened their wings
softly and stepped
over every dark thing.

I'm John Lienhard at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)

---

See the Wikipedia articles on herons, snowy egrets, and Mary Oliver. The full text of Mary Oliver's poem may be read in the plagiarist poetry archive. For more on this theme, see Episode 2568. For more on the fight to save birds from milliners, see Episode 599. All photos by J. Lienhard.

The Engines of Our Ingenuity is Copyright © 1988-2010 by John H. Lienhard.

 

Why is the Sky Blue?

Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The gas molecules in the atmosphere interact with the sunlight before the light reaches our eyes.

The gas molecules in the atmosphere scatter the higher-energy (high frequency) blue portion of the sunlight more than they scatter the lower-energy red portion of the sunlight (this is called Rayleigh scattering, named for the physicist Lord John Rayleigh). The Sun appears reddish-yellow and the sky surrounding the Sun is colored by the scattered blue waves.

When the Sun is lower in the horizon (near sunrise or sunset), the sunlight must travel through a greater thickness of atmosphere than it does when it is overhead, and even more light is scattered (not just blue, but also green, yellow, and orange) before the light reaches your eyes. This makes the sun look much redder.

Caution: Never stare directly at the Sun.

Extra Credit Question: What do the letters of this acronym stand for?

Roy G. Biv

source: Enchanted Learning

Mariposas

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, and the new has come!" 2 Corinthians 5:17

Pre-school & Kindergarten Butterfly Activities

• Any of these Caterpillar Crafts
• A Butterfly Dot-to-dot
• Put together a Butterfly Puzzle
  
• Play Butterfly Go Fish
• Watch Signing Time! Volume 8: The Great Outdoors and review the signs for caterpillar & butterfly
  
• Online Butterfly Puzzle
  
• Play Butterfly Dominoes
• Butterfly Color-by-Number
• Color a Butterfly Online
  
• Any of these coloring pages
  
• Make an Origami Butterfly
• Painted Symmetrical Butterfly: Fold a piece of construction paper in half and cut out a butterfly shape. Open it up and allow the student to dab different colors of paint on one side. Fold the butterfly back up and smooth it down with the palm of the hand. Open it up and you have a symmetrical butterfly.