A Window of Opportunity

Wednesday turned out to be a beautiful day sandwiched between two cold, rainy days. I got my class out and they had to put up with mosquitoes instead of rain but were rewarded with great views of some cool birds. The species count from yesterday morning was 45 but it includes good looks at Bobolinks, Alder Flycatcher, Yellow-throated Vireo and Blue-winged Warbler. I doubt many of the students realize how special some of these birds are, I know I didn't when I started birding.

Today was very different. A front coming through is bringing rain and lower temps. We went out to a local marsh and it was pretty quiet except for the Sora calling and a flyby Bank Swallow. We had a nice discussion about habitat as we compared a recently drained wetland to the protected wetland we visited. If there's one mantra I want my kids to hear it's "Habitat is everything!"

Tomorrow we're doing a mini-Big Day (is that an oxymoron?). I have the class divided into teams and they are going to survey each of the spots we visited for class and at the end of the day we will produce a class "Big Day" list. Every year we try to beat the previous year's total. If we can hit 80+ we will have a new record. It's funny how making this a competition really gets the kids jazzed up about it. Of course, all the teams want to see more than me....

We'll see tomorrow...