Some Birds are Winter Texans Too

I have to say that personally I have always loved nature and walking out alone and quietly in the pastures behind our home when I was little.  I dreamed of one day getting a horse when I was young.  That dream never materialized but I am an avid picture taker now of all things nature including those horses.  After a visit to Yosemite I was reminded of my love of nature and it has stayed with me ever since.  Now I try to instill that same love of nature into my children every chance we get.

We have done just about all the challenges so most things we do now will be a further expansion on those challenges.  I love birds and we have done a lot on hummingbirds but yesterday we saw some birds that we might only see during the winter migration and one was the Common/Wilson Snipe.  

There is a section in the Handbook of Nature Study talking about Migration of Birds.  I looked that up since this particular bird is not in there.  Plus we looked at several bird ID books we have and my favorite place to look is on my itouch on the program Bird Explorer Pro.  We love listening to the sound of each bird.  We all agree this bird has a spooky call.  We saw this guy on the side of the road while leaving home.  He blends in well and as I was slowing down to take pictures I guess he figured if it stayed still it would not be seen.

This next one is what we think is the Orange-crowned Warbler.  We have searched and searched on this one.  We finally decided because of its call.  It looked like it had a nest in the land next to ours.  We also read in the book HONS the section on How Birds Fly.  We were out there for a long while watching this bird fly from branch to branch and give its call.      

   Our nature study this week was around our house and we found some never before seen birds.  How cool is that?  I wonder what we will come up on next week?