It's time for the Great Backyard Bird Count (Feb 12-15, 2021). I'll be spending at least 15 minutes during that time looking for birds here in NW Indiana. I invite you to try it, to! / Ya llegó el momento de buscar pájaros - entre el 12-15 de febrero, ¡vamos a pasar unos 15 minutos buscando pájaros y compartiendo los resultados!
My family got to see the Resplendent Quetzal in Monteverde, Costa Rica, this past December. While it's pretty spectacular, we also know that on our hunt for this incredible flagship species, we see SO MANY other amazing and beautiful birds along the way!
A few months ago I posted about "monitoring," the process of keeping track of what you see and experience, in order to learn about a specific past event, or to track change over time. I talked about how you don't need to be a scientist to practice "monitoring." The Great Backyard Bird Count is a great example of that!
Pueden leer mi post sobre el monitoreo, un proceso de anotar cosas que vemos y experimentamos para ayudarnos a aprender y ver cambios. ¡No es necesario ser científico para practicar el monitoreo!
If you have not heard of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, you just did, and I recommend you check them out from now on in your life. They have so much to offer when it comes to learning about birds, including photos, recordings, and projects like this one that you can get involved in! They have a number of programs for Lifelong Learning and Citizen Science, and some apps to help you with bird-watching, including bird cams where you can watch birds up close! Here is a link to the Ornithological Association in Costa Rica, too!
Pueden buscar mucha información sobre pájaros en Costa Rica en la Asociación Ornitológica de Costa Rica, incluyendo una lista de aves de Costa Rica, eventos virtuales, y ¡más! También pueden ver esta página para pajareros en EEUU.
Here's the live bird cam at the Cornell Feeder in Ithaca, New York. They have many bird cams, but this one pretty much always has visitors!
If you would like to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count, download one of Cornell's apps to your phone. Use The Merlin Bird ID app if you are new to identifying birds - it will ask you three basic questions about the bird you're looking at to help you identify it. If you are already pretty comfortable identifying birds, you can use the E-Bird Mobile app and just send in your list after you see a few birds.
You can also find information there if you would rather enter your bird info from your computer/desktop/laptop.
Pueden buscar pájaros del 12-15 de febrero (¡o cualquier día del año!) y mandar tus notas al laboratorio de Cornell, utilizando varias opciones de apps. ¡Pueden bajar la app, observar aves durante solamente 15 minutos, y mandar tus resultados! Esta app es para personas que son nuevas buscando pájaros - te ayuda a identificar lo que estás viendo.
Then all you have to do is look for birds for 15 minutes, sometime between Feb 12-15, 2021, and record what you saw in the app of your choice. That's it!
Birdwatching is fun, it gets you out in nature, and you can learn a LOT about your own backyard by finding out what kinds of birds you have, and watching them from year to year. If you're still in doubt about the reasons to watch birds, listen to this profound and beautiful podcast from black ornithologist Drew Lanham. From the promo page: "His way of seeing and hearing and noticing the present and the history that birds traverse —through our backyards and beyond —is a revelatory way to be present to the world and to life in our time."
¡Es super lindo buscar aves, y se puede aprender un montón sobre la naturaleza. También da mucha paz. Te lo recomiendo!
Our son was able to start identifying some birds on our last trip to Costa Rica, like the Respledent Quetzal, hummingbirds (left), the mot-mot (right), and woodpeckers. Here in Indiana he can identify robins, cardinals, woodpeckers, blue jays, and sparrows. We're working on learning about so many more, especially migratory birds (more on that coming soon!).
It's going to be frigid where I live for the Great Backyard Bird Count (Feb 12-15, 2021), but we're going to do our best! We only need to look for 15 minutes to participate! I hope that you get out for 15 minutes and see what you can find!
Nosotros vamos a buscar aves por 15 minutos algún día entre 12-15 febrero, 2021, ¡aunque la temperatura va a ser de varios grados bajo 0 aquí en Indiana! ¡Espero que tu también puedas salir a buscar aves en tu patio o en un lugar natural en estas fechas!
If you listen to the podcast that I recommend, above, you'll hear Drew Lanham talk about the Junco. That's this little guy.