Sept 14 - 171 seeds: Today was a busy Pledge to Fledge Day = )
1. Students were passing a stuffed (plush NOT taxidermy!) animal around the room as they took turns answering various questions. When we first started the activity in each class, I asked what type of animal they were passing to each other. Without fail, most of the students provided a choral response of "PENGUIN!" To their shock, they were all wrong.
I graciously explained that the bird in question was actually an Atlantic Puffin. To my delight, this proclamation was not made by me in two of my classes as a few students pridefully shared the bird's true identity with their peers. I briefly compared and contrasted puffins and penguins for all 140 kids.
2. After a particularly interested exchange about current events, I blurted to one of the classes "you guys are almost as cool as vultures!" As you can imagine, they looked at me as though I was crazy.
I took a few moments to explain the valuable role that vultures play in our environment and their disgusting practices of thermo-regulation. This was met with chuckles, oh-wow's, and looks of horror from the 28 different faces in the room.
3. Sports practice affords many chances for bird observations. Tonight's soccer practice provided terrific looks at 3 Common Nighthawks flying northbound(?) over the fields. Needless to say, I politely punctuated our small talk with 3 other parents top point out these cool birds going right over their heads. Our next 5 minutes were spent chatting about nighthawks and birds in general.
Sept 15 - 1 seed: I spent about 10 minutes discussing hummingbirds and their feeder disputes with a fellow teacher at my school. Lori is not a birder (yet!) but she does have quite a love of hummingbirds. She has hummer posters around her classroom = )
Sept 16 - 140 seeds: One of the questions on today's assignment dealt with the Yucatan Peninsula. I could NOT pass up this P2F opportunity as we reviewed the material.
Upon first mention of our southern neighbor's geographic feature, I shared the Yucatan's role in spring migration. The specifics of the discussion was a bit different from class to class but including concepts of neotropical species, nocturnal migration, and fall-outs on the Gulf Coast of the southeastern US.
I was very pleased to have flocks of students asking me questions about this after class!
Sept 17 - 27 seeds: My class is adorned with many bird images and artifacts. This includes some stuffed waterfowl, decoys, posters, and a shelf devoted to bird books. Near the end of a class today, I had a student ask me if the "big duck" was real. I explained that the bird was real but wasn't a duck.
I opened the ID up to the class. Many knew that it was a goose of some sort. Once the ID of Canada Goose was revealed, the expected question of "don't they just live in Canada?" was mulled over by the class in the moments prior to class dismissal.
Sept 18 - 29 seeds:After a full week of school, this one class was realizing that they were surrounded by a bird decor in my room. They started pointed out the calendar, binoculars, carvings, and posters. They were told to keep an eye out as new items are often replaced by different bird-relics throughout the year.
After week #2, my Pledge to Fledge stands at 443 birding seeds dropped. I'm curious how long it will be before they start to germinate?!
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