The secret to doing a bird study from your window

In times of confinement, watching birds in the wild from your home can be a highly recommended mental exercise. If you still can't tell the difference between a turtledove and a male sparrow or a female sparrow, now is a good time to introduce yourself to the exciting world of ornithology and start studying birds. Here we propose a sequence of activities that do not require great knowledge and that will surely arouse your interest (and that of the children if that is the case)

Look around you

You can't imagine how many different birds are fluttering next to you. In this frenetic society, investing your time in contemplative activity can help us reduce everyday stress. It will be very rewarding for you to become familiar with the animals in your environment and to see their tasks outside our world and to do a bird study in your neighborhood.

Learn about them and take notes

Know their names, their habits, their diet... What do you know about that couple of swallows that just moved to your neighborhood? Do all swallows belong to the same species? How do they build their nests? Are they African or European? How long will they stay? Do you like bread? Can they copulate in the air? What sound does your singing sound like? Do they have predators? To know is to love and today we have numerous resources at our disposal. If you are classically styled, you can make your own field notebook as if you were Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente and if you are a 2.0 naturalist you can choose Natusfera or eBird.org among many others to make your notes and with it, your bird study.

Do you know how to tell a turtledove from a dove or tell a male sparrow from a female sparrow?

Help the birds

Now that you know everything about them, it's time to help them, but keep in mind that sometimes the best thing is to do nothing! For example, we can put trays with canary grass and drinking fountains to help our increasingly scarce sparrows (read these SEO articles before: 10 things to know before placing a feeder and Summer and Heat: A Gesture for Your Neighbors). This will also help us to be able to see them closer, but be careful with domestic cats! Another possibility is to offer solutions to the real estate problem by self-building or buying birdhouses. Make sure they are suitable and remember that you will be in charge of maintenance when they are not there.

In Environmental Ideas we are used to carrying out professional bird studies with a great diversity of fauna for our inventories, but if you are able to record 5 species of birds from your window it is a great start and if you have more than 20 you are already one of us!