Denmark Has Gone to the Birds

Submitted by Jessica Dillard

We’ve got some caw-some news that we are raven about here at the Denmark Library! 

If you’ve been to Denmark Library you may have noticed or been heron about our bird feeder located in the adult area just outside the windows. After a few months of having it up, we have gained quite a faithful flock of visitors. A whooping amount of feeder birds such as wrens, cardinals, and blue birds have been visiting round the clock. In the sky you can catch a flicker of a turkey vulture or Cooper’s hawk. You may even spot a murder... of crows.

One of our frequent visitors, a male Brown-headed Cowbird. Did you know the Brown-headed Cowbird is North America’s most common “brood parasite.” A female cowbird makes no nest of her own, but instead lays her eggs in the nests of other bird species, who then raise the young cowbirds.

To help keep track of our feathery friends, a bird observation log is provided for everyone to fill out their observations at the bird feeder or anywhere on the library’s grounds. If you spot a bird, simply fill out the log with the date & time, weather, what bird you observed and its location, and any identifying information about the bird. Toucan even make it into a family event by checking out Georgia State Parks backpack, which contains binoculars and a bird ID guide book, and walking around the library grounds looking for birds with your brood.

Our bird watch log is available now! Peep the pine warbler on the feeder. They are another common feeder bird we see here at Denmark.

To provide our quail-ity contributions to citizen science, the Denmark Library will be sharing these observations on our eBird page. For those unfamiliar with eBird, it is a global online database of bird observations and a citizen science project launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. It provides scientists, researchers, and naturalists with real-time data on bird distribution and abundance. Participation is free and you must create a free account to view findings and log your own.

We are piping with egg-citement about this project! Be sure to visit us swift-ly or you’ll egret it! (We apologize for the fowl language but we couldn’t help owl-selves.)