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MODULE 2: FIELD SCIENCE

This module utilizes field work as a way to explore the many unique behaviors and environmental conditions/habitats that birds experience. Recognizing the enmeshment of behavior and habitat—not studying one or the other in isolation—is a crucial part of being an observant birder/scientist. Being aware of the connection between the two can also inform conservation efforts, a topic that will be addressed in greater detail in the last module. Thus, this module, Field Science, offers a significant precursor to our finale of why it is important that we humans talk about and study birds.

Week 5 | Field Sketching & Notes

 

Lesson:
Many scientists and those passionate about nature keep field notebooks. Field notebooks are a way of recording species, the number of species seen, quick sketches of plants and animals, and other details while out in nature. Field notebooks don’t have to follow a specific format because they are meant to be notes for the authors themselves. 

 

In your field notebook, you don’t have to worry about being neat. Crossing out misidentifications and sketches you aren’t happy with is an integral part of learning and growing as observers. Field notebooks are meant to encourage imagination, creativity, and thinking more deeply about established concepts and theories about various aspects of nature. 

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Ultimately, there’s no one way to keep a field notebook. One note about keeping a notebook: be consistent and use it often for the best results and to feel more confident about note-taking. Don’t worry about perfection and, instead, challenge yourself to try new positions and angles, use different mediums for sketches, and more! It’s all about what works best for the observer.

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Here are some examples of a field notebook. You’ll see that the observer has crossed out mistakes and doesn’t worry about being messy. Remember: yours doesn’t have to look like this!

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Activity:
We’ll be trying out our own field notebooks today! Find a quiet place outside to sit and observe. Listen to the bird calls around you. If you don’t know what species it is, that’s completely fine! Instead, try to describe the pattern and pitch with descriptions in your notebook. 

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When you see birds, don’t feel pressured to sketch every little detail if it’s moving around. Instead, try to look at larger shapes, color patterns, eye-catching field marks, and general movement of the bird. Use colors! Be descriptive and as specific as possible with these descriptions.

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Ask questions. For example: “Why do male cardinals have such bright red feathers? Isn’t that bad for camouflage?” Or: “Why are males often brighter than females?” Questions/hypotheses/conjectures are useful for when you look back at your field notes. You can use these questions as jumping-off points for research and deeper exploration. However, don’t feel like you have to answer all the questions you ask. Often, research leads to further questions. Instead of looking for all the answers, enjoy the process of being critical and curious observers.

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While we’ll be focusing mainly on observing and listening for birds, field notebooks are for all aspects of nature. Many field notebooks include sketches and descriptions about animal tracks, noises, sightings, etc.

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As we’ve established, field notebooks are for the observer—the observer shouldn’t have to tailor their style to make their notes more understandable for an outside gaze. However, to add a bit of fun to this activity, over the course of the next two weeks, we invite all students to take their field notebooks home and practice sketching, observing, and taking notes. Again, consistency is the key to becoming more comfortable in this practice. At the end of these two weeks, when students bring their notebooks back, we’ll have a little contest.

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The contest will not be judged on the quality of the drawings or handwriting. Instead, we’re looking for thoughtful observations and consistent devotion to the practice. At the end of the contest, we invite a discussion so that students can speak about their individual processes—what worked, what was fun, what was difficult, and more.
 

Week 6 | Field Guides: An Introduction & Tutorial

 

Lesson:
Field guides are instrumental in identifying a bird species. Often, they are split into larger categories (families) such as “Ducks,” “Swans and Geese,” “Wading Birds,” “Hawks and Vultures,” “Cranes and Rails,” “Hummingbirds,” among many others. Then, they are usually further categorized and arranged based on their genus, which is a more specific classification than family. Finally, a page or two is dedicated to explaining the habitat, appearances, scientific name, size, range, and behavior of a species (the most specific classification).

 

Field guides can seem daunting, but they are really useful tools if you learn how to use them. For example, if you’re out on a bird walk and see a bird that’s unfamiliar, you can use a field guide to help you. Often, field guides do rely on the user having some baseline knowledge about birds. If you can narrow your identification of a mystery bird down to a family—ducks, for example—you can flip to that section and look for the image that best fits your bird. 

 

Another useful aspect of field guides is that the overwhelming majority of them have illustrations or images of multiple different feather colorations and patterns within that one species. For example, Northern Cardinals are a sexually dimorphic species, meaning the males and females look different from one another. If you’re a newer birder and are not aware of the sexual dimorphism and see a female Northern Cardinal, you might not even be aware that it is a Northern Cardinal. If you were to go to the “Tanagers, Cardinals, and Buntings” section of your field guide, you would be able to see the female, male, and the juvenile. 

 

While field guides have been physical books since their beginning, technology is making it so that birders can open up an app in their phone, an app that possesses the same abilities as paper books. An app called Merlin even lets you upload photos of mystery birds for help with identification. With that said, I strongly prefer paper field guides, as I think the hands-on experience of flipping through pages and actively searching for a species will help with better memory retention.

 

Activity:
In today’s activity, students will put their own field guide searching skills to the text. Hopefully in the past several weeks, students have been becoming more familiar with the general bird families. If not, this is a good learning experience for gaining confidence and comfort in identification.

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The educator will put a bird species on the board, and students will work in small groups to find the species as quickly as they can. No devices are allowed. Whichever group finds it first will get to pick the next bird the other groups must find and so on. Birds must be confined to whichever region is in the field guides at hand.

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N.B. For the compilation of this particular lesson, I examined The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America for inspiration, though educators are welcome to use their own field guides, as long as each group receives the same guide.
 

Week 7 | Habitats: Putting It All Together

 

Lesson:
Forests are an integral—meaning very important—part of all our lives. Trees help to produce oxygen, which we humans and other animals need to live.

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Beyond our own survival needs, though, forests are beautiful places and home to many creatures, many of which are birds. Forests are immensely diverse. Some parts of forests contain large, old trees while another section could be denser with new undergrowth and smaller plants. The difference between these two areas within one forest will attract unique species of birds due to their different needs and adaptations to live in certain areas. The areas of forests near water will also have unique birds.

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On a walk through a forest on any given day in the suburbs of Atlanta, you’re bound to hear, see, or hear and see many of these species:

  • Carolina Wren

  • Corvids (American and Fish crows, Blue Jay)

  • Several species of warbler

  • Occasional Barred Owl

  • Sparrows (Song and Chipping)

  • Hawk (Red-tailed and Red-shouldered)

  • Northern Cardinal

  • American Robin

  • Northern Mockingbird

  • Mallard (if near a body of water)

  • Great Blue Heron (if near a body of water)

  • Woodpeckers (Downy, Red-bellied, Pileated, Hairy, Northern Flicker)

  • Eastern Phoebe

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Forests aren’t the only habitats for birds and nature, though! Georgia’s coast has rich marshes, swamps, and beaches that are home to a myriad of species. 

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Common species of the Georgia Coast:

  • Royal Tern

  • Sandwich Tern

  • Forster’s Tern

  • Laughing Gull

  • Ring-billed Gull

  • Osprey

  • Black Skimmer

  • Brown Pelican

  • Sanderling

  • Ruddy Turnstone

  • Piping Plover (endangered)

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Common species seen in seaside marshes:

  • Great Blue Heron

  • Great Egret

  • Roseate Spoonbill

  • Wood Stork

  • White Ibis

  • Glossy Ibis

  • Black-crowned Night Heron

  • Yellow-crowned Night Heron

  • Little Blue Heron

  • American Coot

  • Common Gallinule

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Even within our one state, Georgia, there is so much variation in the habitats and environments within. Diversity occurs on every level, from the feather coloration of a single species and the smallest ecosystem to an entire state. Ultimately, nature—like all communities—needs diversity to flourish.

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Please note that these lists are not exhaustive—there are many more birds one can see, depending on the location, time of day, and/or season.

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Activity:
Dioramas are a wonderful way to showcase knowledge about a certain topic—for this lesson, various ecosystems. A diorama allows for a lot of creative agency while also demonstrating the extent to which a student has picked up on the scientific information presented. Each student, either on their own or in small groups, will have the chance to produce a mini ecosystem of their choosing. 

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They will determine and produce the following: 

  • Species of plants that grow there

  • Amount of sunlight that reaches the floor

  • Types of birds that live there 

  • How these birds are positioned in the ecosystem (whether they are in the air, poised in the marshes, floating in the water, perching on tree limbs, etc)

  • The presence of any other, non-avian fauna

  • More!

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At the end, each student or group will get the chance to present their mini ecosystem, defend their artistic choices using science to back up their claims, and learn from their classmates’ voices.

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Activity Materials:

  • Shoe boxes or other bases for dioramas

  • Pencils, pens, markers, any paint and paintbrushes available → decoration

  • Model Magic Clay, Play-Doh, or any material similar to these → for the plants, animals, and other details

  • Glue

  • Tape

  • Scissors

  • Paper: both construction and printer paper

  • Miscellaneous possibilities:

  • sticks

  • yarn

  • styrofoam

  • popsicle sticks

Week 8 | Nest Boxes: Building, Decorating, Monitoring

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Lesson: 
Nest boxes are used to provide a safe space for—often migratory—birds to lay their eggs. Nest boxes vary significantly in size, as the boxes are tailored to bird species. Duck and owl nest boxes are much larger than bluebird or wren houses and are placed in different locations, as well. Wood Ducks, being water birds, like nest boxes high on a tree trunk or on an artificial pole in a lake or pond. Barred Owls like mature trees usually somewhat near a body of water and a distance away from human habitats. Eastern Bluebirds, on the other hand, prefer lower boxes and in open spaces with less vegetation—shrubs or bushes at a distance away but still visible from the nest hole (“Creating the Perfect Home for Bluebirds”). Another common nesting box in backyards is that of the Carolina Wren. Wrens are very small birds, and their boxes are correspondingly small. They prefer nesting areas with some shade and some sun, and their boxes can be placed a few feet above the ground—a safe distance from predators—on human facilities (“House Wrens and Carolina Wrens”).

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Nesting boxes were created because of the saddening reality of environmental degradation and subsequent habitat loss. Without as many natural places to excavate or build nests, nest boxes are a safe alternative. Building and mounting nesting boxes are a wonderful way for the community to get involved with bird conservation in their own backyards and local communities. Also, it’s very important to thoroughly and safely clean out nesting boxes after they have been used; a nesting pair may want to reuse that same nesting box the following season or over again that same season!

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Activity:
We’ll be building our own nest boxes. With permission from the school/facility, students/classes can build, decorate, and mount these boxes around campus in areas that adhere to the preferences of various species. 

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If students are too young to responsibly handle nails, hammers, and potential splinters from the wood, educators can purchase pre-made nesting boxes for decorating and finding safe places to mount.

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Activity Materials:

  • Nesting kits (can be purchased on many online and in-person stores)

  • Hammers

  • Nails

  • Paint and brushes

  • Pens/pencils/markers

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