Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 22:09:12 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Leslie Roslund Subject: Young Birder Visits Talbot County MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For two weeks in late December and early January, our 2 and 1/2 year old grand-daughter visited here, along with the rest of her family. Emily seems to have the makings of quite a birder. While here, she never lost interest in watching birds at our feeders, many of which are close enough to the house to give pretty good views. Cardinals naturally caught her eye, but she was also making distinctions amongst the smaller birds - listening carefully as I described the color of the Junco, setting it off from the sparrows of similar size - catching on right away when I pointed out the House Finch as the one that looks like someone spilled raspberry juice on its head - and getting all excited as the flocks of geese would land on or leave from the waters near our house. Now that she is back home in Indiana, her parents report that she has been teaching her Indiana Grandparents the names of the birds that come to their feeders. But the line reported to me that has triggered this note was from her parents reporting that every time Emily sees a Chickadee, she will call out the name and then add the phrase "that's one of my favorites". (The girl is just beginning to learn to talk, yet that phrase correctly reflects the enthusiasm she showed the few times that a Chickadee appeared for us here in Talbot County.) She knows the calls of several birds, based on the bird clock that surely many of you have, which has a bird at each hour point, and plays the song of the bird at the hour. Earlier we had given her a bird book which had the same birds and songs arranged with a push-button design that lets her push the button beside the bird to trigger the song. She has used that book a lot. I would be interested in hearing of other books and toys about birds or birding that others have found suitable for use with pre-schoolers. The joy of birding is wonderful indeed! I'd love to have it turn out that our little Emily is already discovering that joy, and can hence share in the thrills of birding for the rest of her life. Les Roslund Lroslund@bluecrab.org Talbot County Easton, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey =======================================================================