The Downy Woodpecker Post

My mom, Jill, was in the backyard, and she saw a woodpecker. She took a picture of it, but she didn't know what it was. But, when I came home from school, I told her. We found out what it was by the internet. First, we thought it might be a redheaded woodpecker, but it didn't have red all over the head, so then we looked at downy, and it was JUST like downy. We know it is a male because it has red on the head. The females do not. We've seen a downy before in the net at the Nature Center when GranDaddy was here a long time ago. That was the first time we ever went to the bird banding station.

Facts we learned while making this post:

Today we are using my Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in

Song book for information.

They are the smallest woodpecker in North America. There are lots of Downy Woodpeckers. They live in city forests and in wilderness forests. They live all over, and do not migrate. They eat insects.

This is the call.

This is a picture of a Downy Woodpecker that we got from my mom, Jill.

This is a picture of the downy woodpecker that we found on the internet.

Red Shouldered Hawk Facts

Yesterday, I was playing on the playground, and we saw two red shouldered hawks. They were soaring. And, we're not sure that they're red shouldered hawks, but we think they are because we heard the call. We knew the call because blue jays copy it and we've been hearing blue jays doing it, and we just knew the call. Here it is again.

Facts we learned while making this post:

5 day old red shouldered hawks can shoot their feces (which is their poop) over their nest. When you see a lot of bird poop on the ground, you know that you're close to an active nest.

They eat small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and crayfish. They catch them by running or hopping after them on the ground or they drop on a prey from a perch high in a tree.

The female puts her nest high in the tree. She lays 2 to 5 eggs a year and sits on them for 33 days.

Here is a picture we found on the internet.

Arden and The Turkeys

My friend Chris has turkeys and I've tried to pet them and I never have. But I have pet one of her chickens, and I named it Silk Feathers with the nick name Silky. I named it Silk Feathers because its feathers felt like silk.

Here's a picture of me petting Silk Feathers.

Here are Chris' turkeys.

Here's the turkey I made for school.

The Black Capped Chickadees

We're writing about black capped chickadees because we see them a lot in our yard. I know how to make the call. We'll record it in a minute, and then find a different kind

of call on the internet.

We're gonna learn about black capped

chickadees from our Michigan bird book.

Facts we learned while making this post:

*They are a permanent resident of Michigan. They survive the winter by snugging in nest boxes or nests with up to 50 other black capped chickadees. They lower their body temperature at night. This helps them use less energy, so they don't need to find food at night.

*The males and females look the same.

*They eat bugs all year long. In the winter, they eat some bugs, and an extra amount of seeds

and fat. They eat mostly bugs in spring, summer, and fall.

*They weigh as much as one quarter.

Here's the call that I recorded:

Here is a call we found. There are four calls on that page. They don't sound like our chickadees. I think that's interesting.

We're going to put pictures up that we took around our house, and then another picture that we found on the computer. 5 pictures and 5 calls!

Snow Geese Facts

I'm doing a report on geese, so this is how we got the idea for this post. Here are the facts I learned:

· The Snow Geese are medium sized.

· There are a lot of Snow Geese.

· They are noisy. Snow Geese make their call

in the air, on the ground, and in any season.

· They breed in the summer in arctic and close to the arctic parts of Canada.

This is the call.

We found these pictures on the internet.