Garden Birds and Me

I drew a blue tit for my fieldwork notebook which I enjoy drawing images of animals and writing information about them such as their scientific name, habitat and diet. I drew this image with chalk pastels, which is my favourite medium.

I have added a bird feeder to my garden and after a few weeks birds are coming to my garden daily. I have seen Wood Pigeons, Eurasian Blue Tits, House Sparrows, Great Tits, European Robins, European Goldfinches and even a European Green Woodpecker. I have found that the Bluetits really like the peanuts.

I wanted to influence and inspire the local rainbow unit that I volunteer at. The message that I wanted to get across was that anyone can get involved with nature and encourage the girls to be curious and explore nature. To do this I ran a meeting where I taught the girls unit about birds, where they live, what they eat and how they build nests. I then asked them to collect things that they could find in nature, on the ground, that they thought would be useful for birds to build their nests and then discussed why we thought they would be good. I also went through some of the common birds that they might see in a garden so that they could identify them if they saw them. We also discussed what we can do to help them such as putting up a bird feeder in a garden.