Feathers...wings and tails

We sat at the back window to watch birds. I asked the boys to pay attention to tail and wing feathers; to notice the shape, color, length, etc. Also, do they flip up ever? And so on...

We were able to observe a cardinal, a dove, a robin, and a house sparrow. I did not see the cardinal, but my 6 year old noticed that when the cardinal was still, it's tail was out, but when it looked around, the tail "flicked up" for a second.

The robin we all saw for a while. They observed that the tail was narrow and rounded when walking or standing, but pretty triangular when flying. They noticed that the wing feathers where pointed and long and overlapped the tail feathers when it landed.

The dove has a tail "like a fan" in flight they remembered (we had seen it earlier that morning, and MANY times before). Josh also remembered that he could see white on its tail when it flew. They also remembered that the doves feathers were darker underneath.

The sparrow's tail was notched, but a more easily seen notch when flying. The wings were pointed and relatively short.

The boys all noticed that the tail feathers spread out during flight no matter what the shape, and wondered why... commenting that for flight they must need them spread out...hmmm. (I love nature study!)

Later, while I was typing this blog entry, we saw a cardinal again, a brown thrasher, and a finch, and my older son and I were talking about the length of the tail feathers in proportion to the wing feathers. He noticed that the robin's wings were a good bit longer than the brown thrasher's because the thrasher wing feathers did not cover the long slightly rounded tail. He placed the cardinal kinda in between.

I am looking forward to the flight patterns lesson because my boys have been commenting on that for months!