Five Minute Bird Count
These sheets can be found on the official New Zealand Bird Survey website here: https://gardenbirdsurvey.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/gbs-tally-sheet-1.pdf
Let’s do a bird count! You can download the bird count sheets for this here from Landcare Research.
Here are lots of resources and fun activities related to the bird count.
Note that you only cross the box for the biggest number of that type of bird seen at ONE TIME. The official bird count is in a set week and takes an hour. You can use these sheets to do your own bird count whenever it suits you and do them for a much shorter time. We suggest doing several bird counts in different spots, each one for 5 minutes. It will be interesting to see what birds you spot and which birds are the most common.
If you want to do this for a maths exercise, you could predict how many of each bird you will see, and then compare your predictions with the results. Instead of using the printable bird count sheets, learn about tally charts and do a tally chart of the birds that you see over a set period of time. You could then graph these results. Discussing which type of graph is most appropriate to display the data with is a lesson in itself!
Here are lots of activities that you can do to learn more about the birds in your green space:
Use this fantastic website to identify birds, listen to their calls, or to learn more about them. You can sit quietly in a green space and play the birds' calls on a phone to get them to come and visit you. Play the male grey warbler call and see if the tiny grey warblers fly down to see you. They are one of New Zealand's smallest birds and are often difficult to spot. Try playing other birds' calls and see what other birds you can get to come and see you. We've had lots of fun with this activity and had luck with piwakawaka calls, yellow hammer calls, quail calls and silver eye calls. We'd love to know what birds you got to come close to you!
Try one of our bird scavenger hunts
Make a bird feeder and attract more birds to your garden.
HERE is an online bird identification guide and bird calls too.
Click HERE to use the Bird Atlas for biodiversity and take part in a citizen science activity.
For more activities and information about New Zealand birds check out our Online Nature Classroom, Birds of Aotearoa.
Read ‘Aroha Knows’ by Rebekah Lipp and Craig Phillips. What birds can you spot in the book? Do you know which ones are native and which ones are introduced species? Enjoy connecting with nature like Aroha, and go bird watching!
