Bird Study Experiments

My middle daughter loves birds. She regularly asks that we go back through a bird unit study. Because of her love of birds, we have done unit studies focusing on wood thrushes, and robins. We have hiked our local Audubon Nature Trail. We have spent time at the local Environmental Center to observe birds at close range. We have attended Beginning Bird Watching events with our local hiking club.

So it happened that while I was at the library by myself, I spotted this book on the shelf. I brought it home and my middle daughter promptly hid it in her room. Several days later, she brought it to me, requesting that we try some of the experiments listed in it.

We tried two experiments from this book so far. You could say that the experiments were failures or you could say we learned a great deal. Because we actually touched foods that birds eat and materials birds use to make their nests, I choose to believe we learned a great deal. I choose to believe that the kids learned more about the foods birds eat and the things they use to build their nests by touching and holding these things than if we had just memorized the lists.  Through these experiments we were able to talk about different types of birds and how different types eat different things. Different birds make their nests with different materials. All these things were positive. But only one bird ate from our Bird Buffet.

This post contains the pictures from the bird experiment about the foods they eat. I will do another post for the experiment about the nest building materials.

My middle daughter loading the worms into the bowl for the experiment.  Do you
see her bird house? That was all she wanted for her birthday.  

These are the different types of foods birds eat. From top left
Top row: Fruit (especially soft fruit), animal fat, sunflower seeds.
Bottom row from left: softened oatmeal, worms, and breadcrumbs. 

A close up on the table as we set up our experiment. Worms in the foreground and breadcrumbs
above them.

 

 

This papa Cardinal studied the situation from every angle, but he could not be persuaded to eat anything. Remember the scripture that says, "How useless to spread a net in full view of all the birds!" (Proverbs 1:17) Well, they sure seemed to think this was a trap. 

This little guy studied the situation from a little farther away. He didn't get as close as the cardinal.


One bird did swoop through and grab a snack, but I didn't get a picture. An old crow ate a bite of the animal fat.

But guess what did eat the food? Yep. Squirrels. They had a feast. They went from one bowl to the next starting with the breadcrumbs. They left only the worms and the animal fat.