We know our members could use some cool STEM projects to do with their patrons and students as we get toward the end of this tough semester. We are celebrating Citizen Science Month, and enjoying all sorts of STEM projects from the website SciStarter: Science We Can Do Together.
If you are like me, you have been enjoying seeing all the birds coming around this spring. And you can spend some time doing some citizen science and do some bird counting! This would be fine to do on your own, and also a fun thing for you to share in the library.
| Description | Celebrate Urban Birds provides an opportunity for everyone across the country to watch birds and participate in activities focused on birds and neighborhood habitat improvement. Participants learn to identify 16 species of birds and watch an area about the size of half a basketball court (50ft x 50ft) for 10 minutes to see if they can find any of those birds. They repeat the observation 2 additional times over the following month. Celebrate Urban Birds provides all of the necessary materials to get you started. An important part of the project is to help scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology collect information about the 16 key species of birds and the habitats they use. The scientists have created a project that will use data collected from participants to study these resident and migratory birds and their interaction with green spaces. Participants can observe birds and collect data from urban, suburban, and rural locations. |
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| How to get started | Organizations and individuals can sign up to participate for free at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/celebration/register-for-celebrate-urban-birds/. During the sign-up process, you will be asked whether you’d like to be sent a kit or whether you prefer to download the materials from the website. The paper materials from the kit can be found at: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/celebration/GettingStarted/kit. |
| Ideal Age Group | Families, Middle school (11 – 13 years), Adults, Elementary school (6 – 10 years), College, High school (14 – 17 years), Graduate students, |
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| Spend the time | Outdoors |
| Ideal Frequency | Unspecified |
| Average Time | |
| Type of Activity | At home, On a walk, run, At school, At sports stadiums, |
What else could you do with this project in your library?
- Listen to one of my favorite podcast: BirdNote. A new episode drops every day, and they are only about two minutes long.
- Let students record their own podcasts about the birds they found. Or make some videos of the birds, or of students talking about bird research in the library and bird sightings they did.
- Work with an art class to let students draw pictures of birds – maybe the birds they can see out the window, maybe one they took a picture of in their observations
- Work with a biology class to talk about the life cycle of birds, nesting habits, care and feeding of the baby birds
- In a math class, figuring out how far different birds travel and the area they cover would be interesting
- In an English class, reading poems or fiction books about birds would be easy to find, and give more perspective on birds. Or students could write their own poems and stories about the birds they have observed.
- In an journalism class, students could write articles about their observations of the birds.
- In other classes, students could study human interaction with birds over time: feeding different birds, eating birds, using feathers in fashion, and more.
Enjoy some bird watching today!