How Do You Get Children Interested In Wildlife?

Forget Angry Birds & Make the Wild Birds In Your Garden Happy Ones!

On the surface, birding may seem fairly straightforward: you go out, you look for birds, you find the birds, you identify the birds and then call it a day. But it’s so much more than that, and the benefits run far deeper than simply being able to spot the difference between a Baltimore Oriole and a Bullock’s Oriole. There are many ways in which birding can be helpful, and that’s why it’s an excellent idea to not only instill in children a love of birding but to instill it as quickly as you can.

But how do you get a small child interested in birds when much they'd rather play with Angry Birds on their phone than go into the back garden & take note of the wildlife? One method is to play to their interests and insert birding into some of their normal activities. Children love to colour, so perhaps get them a bird coloring book to go along with the usual pages filled with superheroes or Barbies. When they want to play a board game, try playing a bird-themed one instead of Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders. Similarly, if it’s time to tuck them into bed with a bedtime story or sit them down for a movie, pick a narrative with birds as the main subject.

Less subtle ways of getting your kids interested in birds include hanging bird feeders and making it a point to encourage them to watch and try to identify all the birds they can, taking nature walks that will appeal to kids’ sense of exploration and discovery, and going to birding or nature festivals in your area.

There’s no denying that birding is a fun and fulfilling activity. The tranquility of nature, the thrill of the hunt (so to speak), the elation at finding and correctly identifying a bird – it’s easy to understand why kids can have just as great a time doing it as adults. But there are also several ways in which birding can impact a child’s life beyond just the momentary enjoyment of exploring and looking for birds.

Like all the best kinds of activities, kids can have a great time without realizing that they’re learning valuable skills. Waiting for birds to show up? There’s a reason they say that patience is a virtue. Comparing and contrasting two birds in order to differentiate between them? Your powers of deductive reasoning are at work. Trying to find where the birds actually are? Those are your observational skills being sharpened. The list goes on and on, and perhaps the best part is that a concurrent love of science and nature in general can’t help but be planted in your child’s mind. The earlier it’s planted, the stronger it’s likely to grow in later years – and more kids interested in science and the natural world around us is nothing but a good thing.

So while birding on its own merits is a fun and rewarding experience for kids, it’s also incredibly useful for helping your child to further develop necessary secondary skills as well as a healthy love of science and nature.

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How do you encourage your children to get involved with nature? Is bird spotting a dying pass-time? Would your kids rather get their wellies on & explore the back garden than play shoo 'em ups on their games console? We'd love to hear about your children's love of wild birds - please drop us a line today.

www.wildbirdfood.uk.com is a family run business that supplies top quality bird seed, sunflower hearts, bird feeders and other animal foods & accessories.

How Do Wild Birds Stay Cool in the Summer?

Floating Birdbath Raft from Kennedy Wild Bird Foods

The UK heatwave seems to have been around for months now & we absolutely love it. Blue skies, white fluffy clouds, bright orange sunshine - what could be better for the body & soul?

Luckily for us, we have the technological know-how to create areas that are temperature-controlled, and so can escape the Sun’s wrath by moving indoors to shade & air-contolled rooms.

Birds, unsurprisingly, lack the intellectual capacity to build such machines and thus have fewer artificial options to make the summer heat more tolerable. Note the use of the word “artificial” – because fortunately for birds, they can still utilize a few more natural ways of keeping cool.

Unfortunately, one of these ways is not sweating. Curiously enough, birds have no sweat glands, giving humans another advantage over them when it comes to beating the summer heat. Compounding that small evolutionary oddity are the facts that birds’ natural body temperature generally hovers around 40 degrees Celsius, their metabolic rates are generally fairly high and birds’ lifestyles are active ones. But despite the deck being stacked against them, birds can still get through heat waves without keeling over or dropping from the skies.

Much like dogs, birds will pant in an effort to lower their body temperature. Going hand-in-hand with that behavior is the respiration rate that birds have evolved to possess – in other words, they breathe rapidly enough that their body heat is dispersed much quicker than if they were to breathe at a normal speed. Additionally and as you might expect, the parts of birds that are covered with feathers (read: most of them) hold heat extremely well. Accordingly, there are still a few bare patches of skin on various birds – usually on the legs, feet and face – that allow some amount of heat to escape.

If those strategies don’t work to their satisfaction, birds are smart enough to have figured out other behaviors over the millennia that can combat the blazing heat. Much like those of us who choose to either stay out of the direct sunlight or inside altogether on a hot day, birds will not only try to stick to shaded areas as much as possible but will also cut down on their activity level during those parts of the day when the Sun is highest and most intense. When a bird is lucky enough to be caught in a cool breeze, it may puff out its feathers or flutter its wings in an effort to let the fresh air hit its exposed skin. Finally, some lighter-colored birds have even become little avian scientists and will turn those parts of themselves that are lightest toward the Sun. The reason? Lighter colors reflect more heat, and so these birds won’t absorb as much heat from the Sun’s rays.

But sometimes, birds just can’t do it all on their own. Luckily, we offer plenty of products that further help birds stay cool beyond what they’re able to accomplish by themselves. From bird baths to water coolers and even decorative fountains, there are many options for birders to consider when they decide they want to help their wild garden birds out. Baths come in all shapes and sizes, but we recommend the floating BirdBath Raft which sits on the surface of your garden pond and provides a constant source of refreshing water.

So even though birds may not be able to enjoy sitting in the blazing sunshine, they’ve found many ways to beat the heat nonetheless – and they don’t even have to pay for any of them.

How do you look after your wild birds during the summer months? Do you have any tips or helpful advice that you'd like to share with us & our readers?

Can Wild Birds Predict the Weather?

Wild Bird Weather Vane

Meteorology is a tricky business. We've all been frustrated by the TV weather man for another dodgy forecast. But long before the MET Office or weather forecasters standing in front of a green screen or broadcasting over the radio, people relied on far less technological means to predict the impending weather. Quite often, this involved observing the behavior of animals and correlating that to the weather that would follow. Cows lying down? Must be a thunderstorm coming. Cats cleaning behind their ears? Might be rain on the way.

More relevant to our purposes, included in many of those observations were birds. For example, an old wives’ tale states that if birds feed during a storm, the rain will continue for a long time – but if they don’t, then the rain will end fairly quickly. But are our feathered weathermen any more reliable than a multi-million pound satellite? But perhaps more specifically, are they reliable at all?

Yes they are - and theses techniques have been around for a lot longer than than the space-age technology we use today.

Most birds have what’s called the Vitali organ, a special middle-ear receptor that can sense extremely small changes in atmospheric pressure. With extreme sensitivity comes equally acute pain reception, so the faster the atmospheric pressure falls (indicating an approaching storm), the more birds that fly low (and the lower they fly) to the ground in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort caused by the pressure change in their ears at higher altitudes. They don’t have to be flying to escape the pain either – if you notice a sudden and sharp increase in activity at your bird feeders or a massing on power lines, there’s probably a good chance that a storm is bearing down on your location. Conversely, if you notice that birds are flying high up in the sky, the weather is most likely clear.

The height at which birds are flying isn’t the only way you can use their actions to try and predict the weather. With a storm approaching, seagulls usually take a break from flying and seek refuge somewhere along the coast to wait the bad weather out. And all kinds of birds usually become very quiet right before it begins to rain.

So while birds may not be able to alert you to tomorrow’s temperature or if there’s going to be a frost overnight, they can still be useful and practical meteorological aids. But as for that old wives’ tale that you can determine the relative length of a period of rain by whether or not birds feed in a storm, there seems to be no hard evidence that either confirms or denies its premise.

Are you a farmer that relies on wild birds to help with your harvesting or crop sewing? Do your garden feeders get busy or quiet during different weather conditions? We'd love to hear from you if you've got a story or scientific evidence that you'd like to share with us.

www.wildbirdfood.uk.com sells high quality, low cost wild bird seed and feeders direct to the UK public from our website and our store in Deeping St James, Peterborough.