Best For Birds

I’m writing a fantasy novel and am currently trying to think of names. I recently discovered a few types of bird species that sound great as character names, and want to look for more. However, I realized there are so many species, I don’t know where to begin! Do you have any suggestions for specie names that sound good as character names (common, most likely), or genus’, etc. that have interestingly named birds in them? Thanks!

I love the name Ren I think the bird is spelled Wren but Im going to call one of my kids Ren. (For a girl lol)

Raven, Blue Jay.

or does anyone know of another method to keep birds from fouling (excuse the pun) my balcony with excrement (poo) I’m up to my neck in it they also fly into the windows…

Below are three links. The first is for the owl you talked about. The second is for a product called holographic scare tape. And the third is for a motion activated water sprinkler… maybe not appropriate for smaller birds… but something to think about anyway. Here are the links:

http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=1&p=45518&cat=2,51555&ap=2

http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=1&p=45513&cat=2,51555&ap=2

http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=1&p=44958&cat=2,51555&ap=2

The website they are listed on, Lee Valley, is a respectable Canadian Mail-Order company. I have done business with them many times and have always been satisfied. You can make up your own mind about where or if to buy these things… at least now you know they exist! Hope this helps!

my mom lives in south carolina has for yrs this is the first time anything like this has happened. easily 50 if not more red robins like i said above, any meanings for this or beliefs?
so with it actually snowing down there (it usually doesnt) that could affect them to possible migrate to her home?

We have loads of them down here in Florida, too. It’s BRRRRR cold up north and they are still workin’ there way south to warmer weather. She probably has some good eatins’ in her yard as well:-)

A lot of times on magic shows they have dove or other types of bird tricks where they clap and a bird comes out or they pull the birds apart and they turn into two! Does anyone know how they do that?

If you want to know the real workings of dove magic so you can perform it, there are a lot of books on the subject. If you want to know just to learn a magic secret, here’s the answer:

Magicians use a small incendiary device called a "flash dove." When an electric spark touches the flash dove, it quickly expands into the size of a real bird and flies off stage before it evaporates.

A solar bird bath is a great way to attract birds to your backyard fountain without having to depend on cords or electricity. However, to keep the birds coming, you’ll need to properly maintain your fountain, so keep reading for some great how-to information on maintaining the cleanliness and functioning of your bird bath.

Treat it With a Sealant

Before you put your solar bird bath outside, be sure to coat it with a protective sealant. Depending on the material, use the appropriate sealant. So that means a concrete sealant for a concrete bath and a resin sealant for a plastic one.

Ideally, a good sealant coating should keep the color and finish safe and looking great for years, no matter what the weather or the birds do to it.

Once you’ve applied a few coats of good sealant to your bird bath, make sure it’s totally dry before you fill it with water. If you don’t, the sealant could get into the fountain, corrupting that day’s water supply and even jamming the fountain.

Create a Rough Grip Surface

Just like humans, birds don’t like slippery surfaces - especially near their bath water. So, if your bird bath is slippery or smooth, you may want to fill the bottom with a bit of sand, a coat of concrete, a basin mat or even loose and rough stones from your garden.

Watch the Water Levels

If there’s no water in your bird bath fountain, the fountain motor could burn out, and that’s a real danger on a sunny and windy day. If the water level in your bath is low and the motor is running all day thanks to sun power, you could see the motor burnout if there’s no water to run through it.

So, make sure your bird bath stays running for years by keeping an eye on it during hot or windy days, and check the water levels often. If you’re going away on vacation, consider covering the solar panel with duct tape.

Wash it Out Routinely

Most animals like clean drinking and bathing water, and birds are no exception. Entice the birds to come back to your bird bath by always providing a clean basin. Start by emptying out the water and then scrubbing the bath with a simple brush. Try not to use any harsh chemicals. If you need some scrubbing action, use a mild detergent or a bit of baking soda.

Try to wash and rinse your solar bird bath at least once a week. If the weather has been overcast or cloudy and the fountain pump hasn’t been running, then you should be refilling it every few days to prevent stagnant water, algae buildup and mosquitos.

Bird lovers enjoy having their feathered friends drop in for routine visits. However, to help keep them coming back, it is important to provide a bird bath that is both clean and safe for their use. When you do, you may be surprised by not only the number but also the types of birds that show up.

Trevor Price
http://www.articlesbase.com/pets-articles/measures-on-ways-to-correctly-care-for-your-solar-energy-bird-bath-676508.html

By Jane Claire Lambert

Did you know that in the days of your great-grandparents the inclusion of nature instruction in school was a serious concern? Many of you have read a bit of Charlotte Mason’s books or A Girl of the Limberlost or Freckles. Some of you even own Anna Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study, though for many of us it is collecting dust daily. Did you know that in days gone by, students routinely went on nature walks at all times of the year? They learned about the animals, trees, insects, stars, rocks, and weather, and they learned about them in great detail through daily observation, daily lessons, and daily application.

What has happened in the years since? Has nature grown less amazing? Is it less magnificent and less important these days to notice colors, sounds, smells, designs, and all the beauty that is free just for the taking? Is it less important to one’s well-being to have times of quiet solitude in beautiful surroundings? Is it less interesting now to be swept away with the beauty of the night sky or go owl watching together? What has happened?

In the classroom it could be that the topic itself is slowly escaping from many school curricula. In our present culture, the Creator has been removed from the traditional classroom. With His departure, much of the wonder and amazement with which teachers eagerly tied Him to what has been made left as well.

Take, for example, the simple adventure of walking outdoors and collecting a few specimens of tree leaves. Careful observation could disclose that there are those with beautiful red stems and others with the palest of greenish-brown ones. For many young students, finding that each of these different, beautiful leaves belong to a particular kind of tree might be an awesome discovery. Yet, in many traditional classrooms, the entire process has been reduced to "memorize twenty leaf formations and the test is Friday." The students are left wondering, “Why? Why should we study this?” Because appreciation of the beauty and carefulness with which the Creator has made each and every natural thing is left out of the teaching, there no longer seems to be a good reason to learn about such things. Wonder and amazement have just evaporated from most nature lessons.

And all this while everything out there—from the stars in the sky to the minute worlds inside a single drop of pond water to the cells in a blade of grass—shouts the praises of the One who spoke it all into being. Yes, perhaps we should break away a while from our televisions, video games, soccer games, and central heating and air-conditioning to once again acquaint ourselves with the great outdoors! We have become more and more an indoor-dwelling people, and we’ve not noticed that so much of what speaks of the greatness of our God has therefore been closed out of our lives and out of the lives of our children. The very topics that used to be taught enthusiastically to both the tiniest child and the student of higher education are no longer on the agenda or are taught only from textbooks, rarely through personal adventures.

Even in our homeschooling we are hesitant these days to get outside and find safe places to examine what has been made. We just don’t take the time, because we’ve forgotten how vitally important this activity really is! Many of us don’t live on acreage with ponds and meadows to scout out, and it is more difficult for some to find safe parks and places to explore. Yet, if we truly believed that taking time to get out into nature was critically important, wouldn’t we have a new desire to pray for and seek out special spots to view the natural wonders that are close at hand? Even in the heart of city life, one can find so many great examples of natural phenomenon, and nature is always as close as our own backyard. We even know one family who strolled through cemeteries, enjoying lovely trees of all kinds, ponds, flowers, birds, insects, and more with their children.

If you believe in the need, you will find a way, so here are seven extra special reasons to get up and get out!

Seven Special Reasons to Get Up and Get Out!

1. Nature walks will teach your child to watch everything around him. These outings will greatly increase his observational skills and his outdoor life skills. Take your children walking often, and watch your science lessons become more relevant year after year as your students are able to apply experientially, through this time outside, the concepts you have presented. You see, it is one thing to teach the life cycle of a frog and quite another to find egg masses and tadpoles in a nearby pond! Children are filled with wonder as they use a net to collect specimens or turn over rocks on a lakeshore and find crawdads escaping every which way! This is life! This is the making of memories! This is real learning, not book learning!

2. Take your children out often, and they will find that one thing in nature always leads to another. If they are interested in a frog they see one day, the next day they will wonder and want to find out about the crickets and worms that the frogs eat. Then they may get interested in the condition of the pond water, and so it goes. This is experience-directed learning that is so exciting to your children. By walking outdoors with them on a regular basis, you will set off a chain reaction of learning experiences for your children that will continue for a lifetime, as they find that each discovery is connected to many other parts of nature.

3. Camaraderie—that special intimacy that comes from adventuring and making discoveries together—is another benefit of a good nature walk. Whether a mother or father walks with all their children or they take their journeys with just one child at a time or they use different combinations over the months, the time spent will reap intimacy as well as nature knowledge. Yes, you all will see and learn together, and that is wonderful. The times of quiet togetherness and the times of deep conversations along the way are special features of nature outings. It is as if the Lord has provided a miraculous setting for you to “be” with your children. Planned nature walks will provide years of the type of environment that enhances rich family ties.

4. At certain times when viewing nature, some quietness, solitude, and patience are necessary. Of course a small child doesn’t understand this at first, and the lessons that a parent uses to teach a little one to walk more quietly, sit for a bit, and watch what is around him must be gentle and full of patience. If you model (especially fun when acted out over-dramatically) walking softly and being as quiet as possible for part of your walks, your child will begin to see that it is often in times of quietness that the greatest marvels are seen. Then you will have done your job well. The desire to be quiet in order to see something special will be catching, and in time your child will begin to value quietness and solitude. Nature walks, begun simply and continued over the years—time spent watching and thinking—will develop a “deepness of heart” in a student who learns to quiet himself in these journeys together. Couldn’t our world use a few more inhabitants with “deepness of heart”?

5. As your child grows in his awareness of the magnificence of creation, he will grow to love it. What he grows to love, he will want to take care of. Nature walks, begun early and continued throughout your teaching days, will lead your child to an awareness of the necessity of stewardship of our natural resources. We are all called to be the “gentle tenders” of our world. But if we don’t even know anything about it, it is difficult to want to preserve it and use our resources wisely.

6. Taking time to walk outdoors will create a lifetime appreciation for what the Lord has made, and that deep love of nature will become a rich field for worship. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, and those who spend time in the out of doors discovering the wonders and learning that it comes from Him will have a vast and limitless resource for worshiping the One who created it all! Modeling a grateful heart for the beauty of nature all around us will flow out onto our children. Every leaf, each bug, every cell under a microscope is a marvel worthy of all our praise. If we display a heart of praise and worship for such a magnificent Creator, then wonder and worship will come to our children as well.

7. Something else will grow from enjoyable nature walks and seeing the magnificence of nature on a regular basis. A new understanding in the heart of your student will develop: nothing in nature is “common.” In the book Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, we read that the people in Bentley’s day thought snowflakes were “as common as dirt.” But Mr. Bentley knew, because he had seen them under a microscope, that each snowflake was utterly and beautifully unique. All of nature is like that! Each stone has its own loveliness; each drop of water has an entire world of creatures swimming in it; each bit of moss or lichen—extraordinary! Everything that the Lord has made is amazing—nothing is common! How wonderful to begin at a young age to teach our children about the amazing natural world around them and the One who made it all.

So, if we took a quick quiz, what are the seven important reasons to get up and get out?

1. Gaining observational and life skills, as well as actually experiencing school lessons so that they become relevant

2. Understanding the connectedness of life

3. Experiencing camaraderie, intimacy, and the joy of making rich family ties

4. Developing a quiet heart . . . one that can actually be still now and then, and one that can find benefits from moments of solitude

5. Becoming aware of stewardship and conservation

6. Creating a rich avenue for worship

7. Learning that nothing in nature is “common.”

Perhaps nature walks truly are more important than we first imagined!

Jane Claire Lambert and her husband Steve operate Five in a Row Publishing and are busy speaking at homeschool conferences and creating new products in the Five in a Row tradition. Visit their website at www.fiveinarow.com and www.fiardigital.com for more information, including details about their new four-part nature series: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.

©2008 The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC
www.thehomeschoolmagazine.com
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of The Old
Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC

Reprinted with permission from the publisher.

 

Jane Claire Lambert
http://www.articlesbase.com/homeschooling-articles/the-love-and-the-lure-of-nature-walking-752320.html

The narrative Birds Raven is known to have been state in the North American Pleistocene since the last 1.8 million 10,000 being ago. Bird Ravens are among the most usually found bird species in the Rancho La Brea fossil deposits in Southern California. They silhouetted the wolves, bears and other predators and went after the bison herds. When humans first hunted the bird Raven on the North American soil, it seemed as while the ravens had been already waiting at them.

The regular bird raven is a bird that endows many paradoxes and inconsistency to it. With its 2.5 strike credence and 53 inches of wingspan, it is the major North American bird. It is also the world’s most widespread passerine species, ranging from the high Artic to the Nicaragua, North Africa and India. The regular raven weighs double as much as its side California relation, which is the America Crow. Other than its amount and accent, there are many other customs of characterizing between these two certainly large blackbirds. The bird ravens have extremely arduous bills and hairy and rumpled fluff and when seen in journey, it displays its sharp wings and with their wedge-shaped tail.

A being of thirteen years is a standard age boundary for a bird raven in the foolish. However, if it’s kept hostage it could exceed its duration. With the utmost brain role than body’s load, it may also be one of the most intelligent and brightest of all birds. Ravens have really verified an insightful behaviour and a part for abstract obstacle solving.

Interestingly enough, bird ravens can lay four to seven babyish per couple per year. The juvenile ones then wander broadly, conquering and living in new areas. Garbage-fed ravens do not abandon their greedy habits. They are very alarming birds, that are skilled of homicide seal pups, reindeer calves and lambs. They also take an ample span of victim: mammals, reptiles and other birds. Social relationships among ravens are thorny and diverse which are very imperfectly documented. They also have colossal star in colonizing diverse habitats, with farmland and cities, and promote exploiting and injurious novel food funds.

The bird ravens gigantic vocabulary and screams and even to a partly-musical chirrup, all intimate that they have a great apportion to say to each other. Most importantly they are creepy mimics. It is almost hard to inspect a twosome of ravens cycle aerobatics lacking sensing an enthusiasm or a delight for departure’s sake. Ravens have also been pragmatic as playing contract, tobogganing down the snowfall covered hills and pulling tails of wolves and dogs. When they are young they can be insatiably probing, deconstructing towards anything that might as well just conceal their food.

All this can be added up to the bird ravens behavioural flexibility. Bird Ravens are actually magnificent creatures. Much of what they land up doing is not hardwired; they generally learn it by exploring their surroundings and watching their elders and peers. An important part of the environment that they live in is that it is very gathering. Their shared complexity might as well appeal the evolution of big brains.

Jason Richards
http://www.articlesbase.com/pets-articles/the-raven-bird-711441.html

Today, outside of the apartment complex I state at, there were easily riled birds flocking in the hundreds moving from tree to tree as I got near them. They were making a lot of noise when all settled upon the limbs. I didn’t get a good look at an individual bird but there must’ve been several hundred all grouped together. I live in southwest Michigan and it is Autumn. Curious as to what kind of birds would behave such a way this time of year in this area.

starlings gathering for migration?

Out of all the birds one can get as a pet which one is the most cuddliest? Which one is the easiest to tame and bites less than certain types of parrots such as conures?
You can name multiple bird types but please include why you think that type of bird is the cuddliest.

vulture