Yuraygir National Park- week 3 birdwatching field trip

Yuraygir is a huge national park, more information here, the part we visited on this trip is more south than last weeks visit. We started at the southern end of Sandon Beach at Illaroo camp ground.

We set up on a table in a beautiful spot and started to talk about feathers, wings and tails.

The trees were filled with bird song and birds were flitting about every where.

Mr6 constructed some little wings to feel how birds wings feel.

Mr10 was busy journaling about the different shapes tails come in and what they are used for.
We were hoping to see some kookaburras
and this inquisitive little fellow came to visit us!

We sat enthralled as he flew and perched quiet close to us.

We had the opportunity to watch him for about 15 minutes, in that time he perched on various branches and watched the ground. We were a little concerned he might catch a snake right near us, but we really wanted to see him do the swoop and bashing technique all kingfishers use to kill their prey.
He did swoop and caught a worm, conveniently right next to us. He bashed it and swallowed it, with his small but appreciative audience riveted on his every move. There was also a little butcher bird catching worms and our friend the kookaburra was very interested in what he was doing as well.

After a while the little birds started to sound their alarm calls and the honey eaters and minor birds began attacking our kookaburra friend and after a valiant attempt at nonchalance he made a hasty retreat.

Thank you Mr Kookaburra- Mr6 commented that
"Our kookaburra was probably a homeschooled kookaburra doing a study unit on people, and was studying homeschooling kids this week!"

We settled down to journal about our kookaburra, when we heard some loud rustling in the undergrowth, and then our next visitor arrived.


A Goanna or sand monitor- He is also known as Gould's monitor or a racehorse goanna.
Varanus gouldii.

Mr6 was closest so he took the photos. He is a good little photographer.

We watched him until those little sentinel birds once again sounded the warning calls and then the bird troops all converged on Mr Goanna and harried him away as well.


We headed down to the beach to see who we might find there.
The beach was piled with stuff washed in by the big tides and rough seas we have been having.

Perfect for adventurous and energetic little boys!
They found 2 coconuts, just like Robinson Crusoe apparently.


We drove over to Minnie Water next and went for a bush walk through some bird filled banksia and melaleuka bush on top of the cliffs.


There were lots of birds here, we saw sea eagles up high, and black cockatoos, lots of little bush birds and our 2 little friends.


We really didn't spend much time here as the sound of the surf below was distracting my 2 little birdo's
and they wanted to go and build castles on the beach.


Some of the journal pages inspired by this trip.


On our way home we kept an eye out for birds and saw lots of kookaburras, but we also passed 2 wedge tailed eagles close to home. One was on top a a telegraph pole at the side of the road and the other one flew really low across the road in front of us- A terrific lead up to next weeks theme- Raptors.

Bird feeders

More art journaling today


The boys are doing some lovely work

Mr10 is really enjoying doing the 10 minute freewrites
( Writers Jungle)

and we made bird feeders


with pine cones covered in peanut butter


and rolled in seed

then hung through the garden with blessings to all our birdies.

Week 3 Kookaburras and Kingfishers

We started our week with a rousing chorus of
Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,
Merry , merry king of the bush is he,
Laugh Kookaburra,
Laugh Kookaburra,
Gay your life must be...

well maybe not quite rousing, with an over enthusiastic mother, an awkward ten year old and a very loud and out of tune six year old.

Of course Mr6 asked the curly question of the day..
What is gay?
I explained it was a lovely old fashioned word meaning happy,
Mr10 explained it also means same sex couples
like our friends .......... & .........

Anyway we moved onto a science activity inspired by this one to look at all the different types of beaks birds have,


We looked in one of Mr6s favourite books
"The Man who loved to Sing"
by John Winch
at this picture.


Then the boys used a variety of tools and implements to mimic different types of birds beaks, while we discussed the pros and cons of each and what type of bird has this type of beak.
It was a lot of fun.


We moved onto learning about our beautiful laughing kookaburra who sits outside my bedroom window every day,made some mini books for their lap books and the boys did some paintings in their journals.


Mr10 did a 10 minute freewrite on flying and wrote and acrostic poem.
Mr6 started writing out the kookaburra song for this weeks copywork.
We all did an activity from Tony Ryan's thinkers keys and today's was a brainstorming activity.

Nature Art Journals

We have been inspired by the great ideas for art journaling at a terrific blog called ART PROJECTS FOR KIDS
and searching the net for other ideas.


We love art and all things creative here,


so we all wanted to try combining the art journal idea

with our nature journals we will be keeping for our birds study.


These are some of our pages.


It has really inspired the boys


to try different things and be a bit wild.


It has totally transformed our nature journals.

Yuraygir National Park- week 2 birdwatching field trip

In Search of the Elusive Jabiru

Field trip day today- we headed off in search of Australia's only stork.
The jabiru is also known as the black necked stork, stands at 110 - 130 cm tall and has glorious long red legs- shouldn't be too hard to spot.
I have seen them over the back fence in wet winters and springs.

We headed out to some wetlands on private land to start.
We had the journals, field guide, art materials, binoculars, camera and food all set up in the back, so we just pulled over anywhere and had our school room all set up. I even had little cups of mixed up watercolours pegged together inside a sturdy bag so they didn't spill.


We saw majestic black swans nesting,


whistling kites, brahminy kites, pelicans, cattle egrets, lorikeets- scaly breasted and rainbows, a variety of honey eaters,a great egret and a blue heron- but sadly no jabirus- I know they do nest here but there were none today.


This beautiful spot is someones paddock!

Next we headed out to Yuraygir

Our first stop was Lake Aragon


It was early afternoon, sadly no water birds but the surrounding bushland was filled with chirpy little fellows, unfortunately so was our bird watching party so we didn't get close enough to any to identify any new ones.

Next stop was Red Cliff and we noticed these 2 familiar little birds-
Kez thinks they might be following us!

There are ground parrots in this area alas it was not the best time of day to see them, we did see a lot of kangaroos right on "the edge of Australia' as Mr6 put it. Once the boys saw the ocean they were pretty keen get into it so we headed to Brooms Head .


I set up our school space in a nice shady spot and the boys headed in for a swim- that is them entering the water above. They had wonderful time splashing and swimming and were joined by some camera shy dolphins.

There were lots of shore birds here and we found all sorts of feathers and footprints in the sand. We had afternoon tea and worked in our journals but we still hadn't seen that elusive jabiru and we had one more place to try.

Sandon Point-
we had a majestic Osprey flying above our car for a while as we drove there and we all took that as a blessing. The boys got to have a really good look at it as it was so low and watch it flying. They were noticing details in its feathers and feet, it was that close.

Mr10 almost jumped out of the car when he spotted our much searched for jabiru- and it was that moment when I realised how handy a telephoto lens on my camera would be in our bird study unit.


We found our elusive Jabiru


And right near our jabiru was this tree-
I am a total tree lover and this old hollowed out mangrove is so stunning.


and look who else was here-

On the way home we were escorted by another osprey- so exciting! The boys are super keen to get to the raptors week now. We were driving home through a beautiful sunset, the sky was purple, magenta and gold.


We also passed through Lawrence where we had looked at the Egret Rookery on the weekend- there were many more birds, it was late afternoon and they were all coming home to roost.


We also watched the full golden moon rise- huge on the horizon
a perfect finale on a perfect day.

A new bird in the flock

Mr 6 got busy today and created a new friend.

I am Awesome!

Thankyou Sandra who is sharing this award with me.

In order to accept this award I need to:

1. List Seven Things That Make You Awe-Summm!
2. Pass the award on to seven bloggers you read religiously.
3. Tag those seven bloggers

Seven things that make me Awe-Summm:

Mmmm, this is harder than it looks-

1/ I am pretty good at scrabble
2/ I am a good cook
3/ I love animals and nature
4/ I am a good swimmer
thinking...........

5/ I love art and creating things
6/ I am good at inspiring people
7/ I am a good listener

The seven bloggers I am tagging:

5 Orange Potatoes Lisa does such wonderful things with her lovely girls and shares so much with us.
The Magic Onions is full of beauty and lovely ideas

The talented Therese at earth and living who is having a real viking holiday at the moment

Currawong at Views rom my tree who writes awesome thought provoking posts, songs and plays.

Penny at Deep Space Sparkle who has fabulous ideas for art with kids

Another inspirational blog Art Projects or Kids I am loving Kathys art journal ideas at the moment and she has inspired all sorts of things here.

And one last Awesummm award to the lovely Alecat at Serenades and Solace

So you are all tagged.

What makes you awesome? I think you are all awesome but what do you think?

Homeschooling in our Winter

As we are studying birds this term, the boys and I headed down river to see if we could find some storks or cranes- this weeks focus.


It was a glorious day to do some book work on the river bank, we are so spoiled in winter here.


and we did spot a couple of unusual birdies-
we seem to see them everywhere we go.


At Lawrence on the NSW North Coast is an enormous egret and water bird rookery, that was terrific to see.


I have passed these trees when they are absolutely covered in white and look like they are flowering spectacularly when in fact they are covered in perching birds.I want to bring the boys back here in spring and then in summer so they can see the difference.


Mr6 and I have been learning all about eggs and did some egg shell mosaics to stick into our nests we painted after observing some spectacular raptors nests.


The green shells are from our duck eggs.



The boys wrote some haiku today

On long legs stalking
the brolga looking for lunch
digging for tubers.

~

Elegant brolgas
stretching wings and legs to dance
and greet each other

~

Jabiru flying
low over sparkling water
seeking sustenance

and we made origami cranes


We might have created an origami monster-
Mr10 has made heaps of creatures
We downloaded a free e book with origami instructions.

And following bunny trails as we do -
after haiku and origami, he wants to make sushi and learn Japanese!

I wonder if I can find someone who might like to have a regular meet up with us to share Japanese language and culture.

I am constantly amazed at where our child led style of schooling leads us.
Australian birds to Japanese culture!