Bird Walk/Survey out on the AV High School Creek Trail

May 23, 2011

         This morning Bill Sterling led two 7th grade Science classes down to the Creek Trail for a Bird Walk/Survey. It was a beautiful morning, cool and sunny. Once we got down along the Creek and were in the Riparian zone of the stream, the number of birds singing multiplied six fold. We could hear many more birds than we could see.

        Mr. Sterling knows the calls of most of the birds and he helped us identify the black spotted towhee, and a wrentit by their song. He explained the difference between the calls of crows and ravens, crows apparently go "caw, caw" and ravens make a lower toned sound. We learned to look for not only color of the feather, but shape of the tail, or shape of the beak, or if it has a crest on it's head.

         The kids were really into listening and looking for birds. They were able to keep really quiet as we walked and listened and pointed out birds as we saw them. We only had a few pairs of binoculars to pass around, but everyone shared and had a chance to use them.

         As we left the trail to head back to the classroom we spotted a juvenile night heron perched on a branch in full view on our side of the stream. I have never been that close to a night heron before and with the binoculars you could see how beautiful his patterning of the feathers was and the length of his beak and the yellow color of his eyes. We all were able to observe this beautiful bird for a good long while. He was even still sitting there when the 2nd class came down to the creek.  Mr. Sterling explained that having the night heron there was a good sign for the creek as they eat fish, indicating that there are fish in our little stream that runs through the heart of Boonville. I can't wait until next week when we will study the Macro Invertebrates!