Cycles - Fly Away or Stay ?

Focus: Migration is one of a variety of ways that birds meet the challenges of winter.

Puppets (Thelma Thrush, Willy Thrush, Cappy Chickadee)

Materials Checklist
Puppet Show (puppets, script, sign saying, "Monday at 6:00 p.m.", sign saying, "Days later ...", strip of black cardboard with yellow star on top)
Where's Dinner (cards with "You eat ..." and the name and/or picture of a food)
Migration Diary (Grades K-2) (large map showing Western Hemisphere, picture of a barn swallow, Migration Diary story, double-sided or masking tape)
Who Goes Where? (Grades 3-6) (large map of Western Hemisphere, 11" x 17" maps of Western Hemisphere, 2 sets of bird pictures, bird passport cards, bird field guides-optional)
Migration Obstacle Course (cones or flags for boundary markers, obstacle neck signs, string)
Who's Here Now? (Who's Here Now? sheets, clipboards, pencils)
Winter Survival Strategies (Winter Strategy cards, optional cardboard box, white sheet, large branches, optional seeds or jelly bean snacks)
Seasonal Survey (5/6 ELF) ("Peterson's Guide to Eastern Birds" or color copies of range maps, calculators, pencils, Seasonal Survey Tally sheets)

Supplementary Reference Materials (Barn Swallow Illustration, Tokens for 'Who Goes Where?', Passport cards, Bird Migration, Western Hemisphere map, 'Where's Dinner?' cards, Simple Feeders You Can Make, Winter Survival Strategies prompts, Who's Here Now? record sheets, Bird Sign Scavenger Hunt, Revised Migration Diary activity,5/6 ELF Activity: Seasonal Survey, 5/6 ELF Supplement: Seasonal Survey tally sheet)

Additional Reading/Resources
On the Wing, by Carol Lerner, Harper Collins Publishing, 2001.
Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds, by Scott Weidensaul, North Point Press, New York, NY, 1999.
Flight of the Red Knot: A Natural History Account of a Small Bird's Annual Migration from the Artic Circle to the Tip of South America and Back, by Brian Harrington and Charles Flowers, W.W. Norton, New York, NY, 1996.
USGS has a wonderful website on bird migration.
Amazing facts about bird migration here.
ELF Corner: Swallowtailed Kites (pdf file)

ELF Notes - Template for newsletter on Fly Away or Stay
*Word document * pdf file

Teaching suggestions
Set up and maintain a bird feeder on school grounds so children will have an opportunity to observe birds during ELF workshops. Classes could keep an ongoing record of what they see.

Where's Dinner?
You may want to start by giving an example such as "I eat frogs. Well, frogs would be hibernating, so I'd better fly south" or "I eat berries. I saw some berries on a bush just the other day so I guess I'll stay here."

If you live in a city, identify what common city birds stay through the winter and what strategies allow them to survive. Where do birds go in a snowstorm or when it's really cold? Evergreen trees, tree cavities, among or under dense shrub branches, unused buildings, parking garages.

Migration Diary
Some folks include a few photos of swallows to give a better visual image for children.

You may want to shorten the diary and have children act out the story by flapping wings and moving toward the map in the front of the room as you read aloud. Have one of the adults lead the acting so children know what to do.

Place a piece of rope on the ground as a wire for the “birds” to sit on.

Who Goes Where?
Include the pictures of the resident birds on the map, but only give children passport cards for birds that do migrate so all can determine migration distances.

Using the map scale on your large map of the Western Hemisphere, create a special paper ruler with the map scale to help younger students determine distances. Often converting 1 ½" = 1000 miles is difficult for the children.

Even kindergartners love drawing a line on a map and bringing the map home.

Winter Survival Strategies
Have the group say the name of its bird first - the kids should be guessing the strategy, not the bird.

If you are in an urban environment, add scenarios for city dwelling birds.

• Pigeons: In sometimes large flocks, you look for scraps of garbage or handouts from people. You are clever at finding the warm spots on sunny rooftops and huddle together when it's cold or snowing.
• Sparrows: In small flocks, you visit bird feeders or pick leftover seeds from garden flowers and weeds. You are small enough to find shelter in evergreens, hedges or under shrubs in people's yards.
• Crows: A large bird, you have powerful wings and can fly easily between city and farmland and nearby woods. You spend the coldest, stormiest days with a few others in evergreens sheltered from the wind. If the cornfields are covered with snow, there's always something to scavenge on city streets, including human food scraps and road kill.

Who's Here Now?
Often the school location just doesn't allow for good bird feeding, and also the time of day is a
problem. Instead give students the “Who's Here Now?” card to take home and encourage them to record observations from their backyard.

To get students outside thinking about birds even when there are few birds around, one town set up stations with rhyme cards. In small groups with an adult, kids solved the missing rhyme and then followed the clue to the next station. For example:
STATION 1 (Near an empty bird feeder).
No birds will visit here to feed
Until someone fills it up with __ (seed).

STATION 2 (Near a tall spruce tree)
The buds on the spruce tree by that house
Make healthy meals for a family of ___ (grouse).

Extensions
Send home a bird-feeder survey if your school feeder isn’t very active. Ask children to bring it back for the next month’s workshop. The survey form should include: Name of observer, Date and time of observation, Location, Weather; What birds did you see? (names or drawings) How many of each kind? If the birds were eating birdseed, what kind did they seem to prefer? What were the birds doing? Anything else you noticed?

Make individual bird feeders out of ½ grapefruit rind, hang with yarn, fill with seeds. Pretty!

Play a “Disappearing Wetlands” game. Using floor tiles to represent wetlands, scatter the tiles along a “migration course” and ask the children to hop from one tile to the next as they migrate from one end of a course to another. Then talk about habitat/wetland destruction, take away a few of the tiles, and have the children “migrate” again, noting how much more difficult it is with fewer stopping points.

Learning Goals

Concepts/Ideas

• The seasonal movement from one area to another for the purposes of feeding and reproducing is called migration. Migration has benefits and risks.
• Some birds migrate from northern regions to warmer southern regions in winter.
• Migration patterns and the distances birds travel varies with different species.
• Birds that do not migrate have other strategies for meeting the challenges of winter and can be observed in northern winter habitat.

Vocabulary: Migration, Range, Hazard, Habitat

Skills

• Active listening to understand the concept of migration and its related benefits and risks.
• Role-playing to discover that a bird's food requirements may determine whether or not it migrates.
• Using a map and information resources to compare the migration patterns and the distances traveled during migration of a selection of birds.
• Experiencing through role-playing the many hazards of migration.
• Observing and recording bird activity and hypothesizing whether a bird is migratory or a year-round resident.
• Examining ways other than migration that birds meet the challenges of winter.

Grade Expectations:
Grades PK-K (S30) Birds are living animals; they need food and water to survive. Some birds move from a summer 'home' to a winter 'home' so that they can find enough of the kinds of food they eat and enough water to stay alive. Birds that can find enough of the kinds of food that they eat don't have to move from one place to another.

Grades 1-2 (S30, S35) Birds are animals that are made up of body parts that enable them to survive in the particular places they live. Some birds may stay in one place through all seasons; other kinds of birds must move from one place to another according to availability of food, water and nesting space.

Grades 3-4 (S30, S34) Birds have physical and behavioral characteristics that enable them to get what they need to survive in their environment. Some birds move from one place to another with change in season in order to find adequate food and nesting areas. Some birds have physical and behavioral characteristics that enable them to survive the challenges of cold winter; they do not migrate.

Grades 5-6 (S35, S36) The number and kinds of birds and other animals and ecosystem can support depends on the availability of food, water and other resources. Availability of vital resources changes seasonally and influences migration patterns of birds and other animals.

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