The air is alive with birds in the springtime: tweeting mating songs, building nests, and eating from feeders! It’s easy to say that Spring has sprung! It’s a good time to celebrate them in all their glory with storytime themes and activities.
There are many hidden gems at Yonkers Public Library. One of them is our Birding Backpack, which can be borrowed from all three branches! It has everything one would need for bird watching, from binoculars for adults and children to bird identification guides to a sketchbook with colored pencils.
This week at Crestwood Library, the Wednesday Rhyme Time with Nancy Storytime and the Saturday STREAM Storytime will be saluting birds with stories, songs, and coloring sheets! Saturday’s STREAM project will be a Cardboard Bird Feeder.
Get involved with other birders from around the world through Citizen Science, a website run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. According to the Citizen Science website, “Hundreds of thousands of people around the world contribute bird observations to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology each year, gathering data on a scale once unimaginable.” There are several ways you can get started on your birding journey:
- Celebrate Urban Birds: Get involved with birds and community activities in urban and suburban areas.
- eBird: Track and share your sightings anywhere, any time. This data powers the Merlin Bird ID app, which helps identify the birds you see through a free global bird guide with photos, sounds, maps, and more!
- NestWatch: Find and monitor bird nests.
- Project FeederWatch: Watch and record birds at your feeders in winter.
- Great Backyard Bird Count: In February, celebrate birds by counting them at home or in your community.
Don’t forget about the local Audubon Society, Hudson River Audubon Society of Westchester. According to their website, they “offer guided field trips; nature walks; feeder and hawk watches, educational programs. At Lenoir Nature Preserve, Yonkers, we have a Butterfly and Hummingbird Garden.”
Of course, Yonkers Public Library has a number of bird watching books including:
- The children's book of birdwatching
- Sounds of nature : world of birds
- How to find a bird
- Birds of New York: field guide
- Birding the Hudson Valley
- Slow birding: the art and science of enjoying the birds in your own backyard
Get the Birding Backpack and get out there to see the wonderful birds that are all around you!
Nancy Wissman is the part-time Children’s Librarian at Crestwood Library. She loves observing and photographing the birds in her own backyard! This blog’s photos are just a few of the hundreds she’s taken through the years. Nancy is especially excited about bringing science to Crestwood with the Saturday STREAM storytime, which combines her love of story reading and storytelling with her new passion for science. Nancy has been a librarian for over 30 years, working in several libraries in different library departments, but most enjoys connecting children with literacy.