And Lo! Bird Geography Was Born

Such fun were the children having discovering the wonders of Nature, that trees and birds, in particular, were correlated with almost every subject in schools. (That was before the days of "activities", then "correlations" was the big word in pedagogy.) And so we had trees and birds in geography, in spelling, in drawing, in language. We read about trees and birds, and we studied famous trees in history. We had pictures of the "Big Trees" of Cailfornia. Every single child vowed that "Some day I'm going there to see them." We even had trees in physiology, for when we had the lessons on the circulation of the blood, the children immediately became curious about the similarities and differences between it and the sap in trees. We were in a "sugar bush country", and the children were familiar with the “sap run.” In fact, we had a "sugaring off" party in the sugar bush of one child's family.

By the end of the school year each child knew intimately and thoroughly everything about his tree and, by association, comparison, and interest in common, as well as our own general study of the other trees, much about the trees of his schoolmates, and the countryside in general. Maggie had picked the bluebird, but when, early in September, she herself found the exquisite cup-shaped nest of the red-eyed vireo, suspended from a forked twig of her "very own tulip tree", she got the child who had chosen the vireo to " trade " with her.
Studying the birds' winter and summer ranges, we found that Maggie's red-eyed vireo, one of which had also nested in a maple in the schoolyard, wintered in South America.

We combined drawing, geography and birds that day, drawing outline maps of both North and South America, marking the breeding range in North America in shaded lines, and the winter range in South America in black. And lo, "Bird Geography" was born! We studied birds' color, markings, migration, courtship, nesting habits, eggs; how birds incubated; how they cared for their young. We noted the plumage, and which males and females looked alike, as did the chickadee, which was George's bird, or which were entirely different in color, as were the male and female scarlet tanager that "belonged" to Marie.

We wanted to know with how many of the birds the brightly colored males changed colors and markings in fall and winter, as did the bobolink that had nested in Johnny's upland mowing, and was "his bird." How indignant Johnny became when, in one of the books I had brought from the town library, he read that in South Carolina his bird was called the "rice bird" and was killed by thousands!

By: davidbunch

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