Ms. McEnaney's & Ms. Ashcroft's 1-2 Classes: Ornithology Experiment

For the past two weeks, the 1-2 students have been conducting some experiments about the feeding habits of local birds. We talked to the kids about being Citizen Scientists - that is, local citizens gathering research about the birds in our area from our own observations. Mrs. A. shared an example from another school of a group of students who wondered if birds' feeding habits would change with the introduction of a decoy cat near the feeders. Those students shared their results with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We then asked the students to think about ideas for an experiment we might conduct in our outdoor classroom. Kids had time to talk at their House Tables, share ideas with the group and ultimately vote on an experiment we would conduct ourselves.

The first part of the experiment was to determine the type of food most popular to our local bird population. After showing the students the different foods we had to put in the feeders, we asked them to hypothesize which food they thought would be most popular. To then determine the result, we put out different types of bird food: fruit & nut, sunflower seed, safflower seed, nyjer seed, no waste seed mix, mealworms, and a cheaper food with a lot of filler seed that we called "McDonald's" as it was our bird junk food option. : ) We were careful to measure how much food we put into each feeder and to tally the number of refills each feeder needed over the course of the week. Using that data, we determined which food was most popular among the birds. We decided to rule out the cheap mix and the sunflower seeds as our observations let us see that these foods, though most frequently refilled, were eaten mainly by our squirrels! The most popular food among our bird consumers was nyjer seed. We filled all of the bird feeders with nyjer seed and got ready for the next part of our experiment.

The second part was to see if birds would continue to visit our feeders if we put out a decoy owl nearby. Would the birds be afraid and keep their distance? Would the birds figure out it was a decoy and visit the feeders as usual? Again, students made hypotheses about the outcome they expected. After mounting the owl on the fence near the feeders on Monday, we waited to see what effect if would have. What we noticed is that there seemed to be no change in the number of visitors at our feeders. They were NOT intimidated - they seemed to know our owl was a fake! This fact may have been revealed to them early on as it had been snowing and our decoy was covered with a layer of snow (which a real owl would never permit!).

All in all, we found answers to our questions and are enjoying the influx of feathered friends to our feeders. We noticed that with the passing of time they are becoming less intimidated by us as well and will fly a little closer when we are out in the outdoor classroom space.

Tracks in the snow - our first evidence of bird visitors at the feeders.