I first heard of the MY Garden Birdwatch from Bart, and when I broached the subject to Ethan, explaining to him what we needed to do to be part of the “bird-watching crew”, he got all excited and started counting down to the day we would do the count.
This Garden Birdwatch count is an annual activity where volunteers all over Malaysia would do a garden bird count at a specific time frame, and then submit the data to be included in the yearly bird count survey. To get ourselves ready, I downloaded the bird pocket guide and the bird count sheet and brought it along with us on the date of the count.
The kids got up bright and early and we decided we would do the count on June 2 2012. Yes, they brought their binoculars too!
It was supposed to start at 9:00a.m. and last for 30 minutes, but our first count spot (i.e. at the swimming pool area) did not result in many birds landing on the ground. Birds flying overhead are not supposed to be counted, according to the rules of the bird count exercise.
Then I happened to see some birds in the playground, so we headed there instead. And our 30 minutes started at 9:05a.m.
Ethan was very diligent and wanted to spot and count as many birds as he could, but Hannah was very distracted by the playground equipment.
“You have to be quiet so the birds won’t fly away!”
Ethan checking against his bird watch pocket guide on what kind of birds those were…can you see them in the background? They were actually rock pigeons!
“Let’s see if I can see more birds from up here!”
We spotted quite a lot of Eurasian Tree Sparrows, and also a very pretty Olive-backed Sunbird, but too bad, I could not get a good enough picture. You can see an array of awesome bird shots Bart captured during his bird watch session with his sons!
The day after the bird watch and bird count, Ethan wanted to submit the survey results. He had read from the website that we are supposed to enter the data online and submit it all online. So I let him do it…and he was only too happy to oblige!
We hope to do it again next year! 😀