Experience Nature with a Field Guide to Your Yard
by Jane Kirkland
It was a gray and chilly winter Sunday morning when my husband and I bundled up and headed out to our favorite park for a walk. We were hoping to catch sight of the bald eagle reported there the week before.
I was delighted and a little surprised to see other people at the park including a father and his two young children. The Canada geese on the lake fascinated the kids. I thought it was cute to see the father stooping down to chat with the kids at their eye level as he struggled to keep his balance. Later, over coffee, we talked about how pleasant it was to see that father and his children enjoying nature together.
Do you take nature walks or enjoy nature with your kids? Family nature observation will benefit your health and your relationships. Nature and kids are a natural fit! Discovering and observing are esteem-builders. Experiencing together builds bonds. You don’t have to go to the lake on chilly days. In fact you don’t have to go on a walk at all. You can enjoy nature in your own backyard. It doesn’t matter how large or small your yard is.
A Project That Fits
A no-cost, low-impact, low-risk way to observe and enjoy nature with your kids is to create a field guide to your own backyard. This activity requires as little or as much time as your family wants to spare. And it can exercise all the skills your kids are developing: observation, reading, writing, drawing and relationship building.
A field guide to your own backyard can be a little project you do one afternoon. It can be a field guide to the lot next to your apartment or to the pocket park across the street. The point is, you’ll be spending time together, enjoying and discovering, and teaching your child to be observant, skills he can use no matter what he’s doing.
Creating a field guide can be an afternoon project or one that you add to, each season of the year. You can even expand your field guide year after year — just like that baby book you fill.
Start Simple
The key to successful nature observation is to start with modest expectations and make your first observation as long or as short as your child’s attention span.
Gather together a loose-leaf binder, some blank paper, a pen or pencil and a field guide to birds (you can get one at the library). Look for birds in your yard or sit at the kitchen table and watch birds at your feeder.
In the field guide, find the birds that you see and list them in your notebook. This will become the first section of your own field guide — the birds in your yard. Understand that you’ll see different birds at different times of the day and in different seasons.
You’ll be amazed at your child’s reaction when she sees a new species. Heck, you’ll be amazed at your own reaction! Add to this list once a month by taking a short walk or sitting quietly in the yard to observe together. Compare your sightings from month to month.
Build Up
Once you’ve got the hang of identifying the birds in your yard, talk about how you identified each bird in your field guide to birds. Did you observe the bird’s color? Its markings? Its behavior? Did you hear its call?
Look in the front of a published field guide to birds, where you’ll learn about field marks. In your own field guide, list your observations about each bird, including information about its field marks — making one page for each bird species you see.
Make an occasional note about how many of that species you see in your yard in a single day or at a single time. Did you see a flock or an individual? Include things such as the time of day you saw the bird, the season, the weather conditions and the bird’s behavior.
Now you are taking “field notes” and your children are learning about research and improving their writing skills. You can create a field guide page for each species you see.
Branch Out
To finish your page on each species, add a drawing or a downloaded picture from the Internet, or take a photo of the bird.
If you are observing in different seasons, you might notice changes in some birds. Some species have breeding colors, others don’t, but most molt.
Note your observations about each bird’s color and appearance in different seasons. If you’ve been watching the birds at your feeder, note their activity and duration. Do the birds come to the feeder more often in the winter than the summer?
Take it On the Road
Whenever you travel, take your field guide with you. Use it as your own reference to help you identify birds you see at Grandma’s house or at the local park. Add to it by adding species you see beyond your own yard.
Birds are just the beginning. You can create several sections to your field guide, including a map of your yard with labeled plants and manmade structures. Then mark your findings on your map. In addition to birds, you can record trees, insects, mammals, even spiders.
Show your children your love for them by sharing your love of nature, even if you haven’t yet discovered it! This is something you can discover together.
Jane Kirkland is a Downingtown, PA speaker, naturalist, photographer and author of the Take A Walk nature
books for kids. Learn more at www.takeawalk.com.
In July’s MetroKids, Jane will describe how to add history to your backyard field guide and discover what was on your property 100 years ago. She’ll also show how to discover signs that animals have been in your yard and how to estimate how old your trees are.