How to Get Kids Excited About Birds - 10,000 Birds Style

On Monday the 10,000 Birds crew wrote an excellent article about getting kids excited about birds. There are some great tips in there and my submission is included. I didn't want to be a part of the contest but I did want to give my favorite advice about turning kids on to birdwatching. It's great to see that other adults out there are also making a difference and spending time with their kids or local school children. I was lucky growing up to have an excellent nature-minded mother who took my brother and me out on walks to explore. She bought us microscopes, telescopes, and generally encouraged us to be little scientists, even if this meant turning our bathroom into a chemistry lab. When my parents moved after we graduated from high school they found all sorts of bottles and secret potions in the bottom drawers of the bathroom. I guess it's not surprising that I became an environmental educator and my brother is a pharmacist. We both love the outdoors and though our political leanings are very different, we find common ground in nature.

I had the privilege of seeing a copy of The Young Birders Guide by Bill Thompson while attending the birding festival in Titusville, FL. It looks like an excellent guide for young kids and I am anxious to pick up a copy to use with my Jr. Naturalist series. Thanks to people like Bill and the 10,000 Birds contest contributors I feel confident that our computer driven youth will still be in touch with the outside world. And I definitely hope there are parents as great as mine out there showing their kids that it's cool to investigate the natural world whether that is looking at birds or dissecting dead logs or just taking a walk down through the woods.