Birding For Kids, Tips!

We always try to let kids look through our scope at birds.

We just got a nice letter from Jerry Medina, a teacher in Tucson, AZ who is encouraging his first grade class to become interested in birding and blogged about one of his budding birder students. That's so cool.

We love to encourage kids to get involved in birding activities. Kids who are interested and informed about birds become the conservation leaders of tomorrow. Here are a few tips and resources about birding for kids. Even small children can be introduced to birding. Make sure and lower spotting scopes to the proper height for kids so they can see the birds.

Stokes Beginner's Guide To Birds, east

Stokes Beginner's Guide to Birds, west

Our Stokes Beginner's Guide To Birds covers the 100 most common birds in the east or west and is organized by color of the bird so even children who cannot yet read, can look up a bird they see. Older kids who are already into birding should have one of the many full size birding field guides. Kids should have appropriate sized binoculars, with smaller more compact binoculars given to smaller kids, and

full-sized binoculars for older kids, 8x10 are good

The Young Birders part of the American Birding Association website is an excellent resource for kids age 10-18. They have a Young Birder of the Year Contest with prizes in categories for keeping a field notebook, bird illustration, bird writing and bird photography. They also have kid's birding camps and kid's scholarships to those camps and other birding activities. A Bird's-Eye View bimonthly newsletter is edited and written by young birders.

This holiday season give the gift of birding to a kid by giving binoculars and a field guide, or even start them with a bird feeder. Most importantly, you can help spark an interest by taking a kid birding, whether it's your own kid, a grandchild, neice, nephew or just a friend.

Here's a link to the Young Birder's part of the American Birding Association website.