If we want good stewards of our lands for years to come, it starts when we're little.
Before you can even love something, you have to connect with it and in our education world
right now we're a little bit disconnected we might learn about it in the classroom
but there's no hands on and it's hard to connect unless there's hands on and that's what bird by
bird has done. So woodpecker tails are really unique how stiff they are. I guess you have dirty
and worn his tail is. Do you know why it might be like that? When a woodpecker is climbing a tree
he uses his tail as a tripod to lean against the tree. See that? Ouch! So his tail is all worn
from rubbing against tree bark.
We wanted to make people more aware of watching wildlife in your own backyard and we thought
well we could take it one step further and really involve schools. The bird feeders are pretty much
the heart of the program. We provide all the tools and equipment they need to have a bird watching
station at their school. The students in turn their obligation is to be citizen scientists.
What bird by bird did was enhanced our program immensely.
Using the term citizen scientists, collecting real-life data and that has become so powerful
for the kids. We're seeing all these birds in our garden we're we're knowing about their beak and
their feet and what they eat. And so at this kindergarten level they're like yeah I've got this.
I I'm a scientist and I'm collecting data for the greater good.
No matter what what you're studying you can relate it back to birds.
I told them you know I understand that you're not all gonna be bird biologists when you leave
here but you're gonna have to learn hard stuff because really I think high school is about
learning how to learn because they're going to have to learn so much once they leave these halls
and and so if they have those skills then we've done our job. So do you guys remember how we're
looking at the combination of old and new feathers kind of like we're looking at your
combination of old and new teeth when we band you? There is a power to nature to be able to
you kind of pull out this aliveness in children that they sometimes don't have as much today. So
there's there's moments that I see kind of this light turn on when they are watching maybe a bird
for the first time. And they leave this program feeling so connected to nature and loving nature
and wanting wanting to protect it. It's more than just birds by involving classrooms in bird by bird
it will shape tomorrow's conservation leaders.
What are some of the coolest birds you've seen? Well um I've seen lately we've been seeing
seeing an horned owl like on our on this light post and it keeps coming in our neighborhood
which is really interesting because it's pretty cool to see a bird like that in your
community neighborhood. You saw like wood ducks like wood ducks are honestly very pretty they're
so colorful and especially the males. And they're kind of like peacocks. In a way they're like the
Idaho inversion of peacocks. I like that. For wingspans about seven not quite seven feet pretty close.
