Sarah

Activity 2: I already have bird safe windows, keep cats indoors or on the 'catio,' and in some ways have reduced plastics, planted native species in our garden, and started to use eBird to begin contributing to citizen science.  I could check to make sure the coffee I drink is bird friendly, and focus on buying produce that reduces pesticide use.  I also could reduce plastics in my life more and participate more in citizen science. Activity 4: I am looking forward to continuing to learn how to ID different birds by sight and sound and create more lists on eBird to track my lifetime sightings and help with citizen science!  This course inspired me to get familiar with birding technology and resources that help do this and are really pretty user friendly.  I had previously felt kind of intimidated by them and didn't feel I was "good enough" at birding to make lists if I was by myself and not with an experienced birder.  But everyone starts somewhere. I already loved birds but this course reminded me how interesting they are in many ways.  Thanks for the great course!

Today I went to a local park to try to recreate a recent virtual bird walk video from the county parks department, where the naturalist showed off the different habitats found in the park and therefore variety of birds common in each one.  The areas I walked through included grassland, upland forest, riparian forest, field, and a little bit of shrub-scrub wetland.  I could hear lots of birds but only see a few.  I was able to notice how the bird songs and calls changed from each area, and use Merlin to identify a few of the calls, like the field sparrow which I heard the entire loop around the grassland but nowhere else.  I'm also positive I heard an owl in the upland forest!! It sounded the closest to Great Horned Owl on Merlin (of the birds I compared it with).  Birds that I saw and ID'd with Merlin were a Warbling Vireo in the upland forest and a Tree Swallow at the edge of the forest and pond.

Activity 1: It was really interesting to compare the animated range maps.  I had never thought about how northern Cardinals don't migrate the way the warblers do!  Also, it was interesting to see how, with the two hummingbirds for example, they cover different regions of North America like Rufous Hummingbird takes the west coast and Ruby throated hummingbird takes the Mid/East.  I noticed the Rufous hummingbird had a different migration path going back south than on the way north to breeding grounds.  One thing that surprised me was how wide the range of Sandhill cranes is at one time during the year-reaching all the way to the north in Canada while some are still in the states! Activity 2: 3 birds that are year round residents in my area are Northern Cardinal, European Starling, and Red bellied Woodpecker, and I have seen each of those.  3 birds that migrate through the area and I have not yet seen are Sora, Dunlin, and Yellow throated Vireo. Activity 3: For both pairs, the colors and patterns seem much bolder and more strikingly cut in the summer plumage than the winter.  The common loon really lightens up around it's neck/face in the winter too, instead of all black like the summer

For Activity 1 I watched the Bird Cam at the feeder in Sapsucker woods at Cornell lab.  I used Merlin to ID a couple of the birds-but by size/shape I could right away tell apart European Starling from Black Capped Chickadee.  Other birds I ID'd at the feeder using Merlin were Red winged Blackbird and Baltimore Oriole (adult female).  The Bird Cams are pretty cool-they're a great feature to use especially right now! For Activity 3, I saw a mallard looking for food in the pond/wetland area in our backyard.  An American Robin was pecking at the ground around the neighborhood, and I also saw a Killdeer during my run that had been on the ground and took off as I went by.  The Killdeer was tricky to ID using Merlin, I didn't put in the right identifiers at first, but luckily I had seen it's back/tail as it flew away so I saw the orangey/brown color on it's rump/tail.  It's shape in the air and it's call helped me confirm that's what I saw as well.