Ornithology at Lynnwood Elementary School in the Guilderland School District

In early June I had the chance to study ornithology at Lynnwood Elementary in the Guilderland Central School District.  I worked with 1st graders in doing a bird survey of the schoolyard and with 4th graders studying owls and their predator-prey relationship.


On Tuesday, the 5th and Wednesday the 6th, 1st graders were ornithologists with me doing a survey of birds of the Lynnwood schoolyard habitat.  Here is what we discovered in walking around the schoolyard looking and listening for birds.

Ms. Gabrielle’s class observed or heard:
Blue Jay – 1
American Crow – 2
Tufted Titmouse – 1
House Wren – 1
American Robin – 1
European Starling – 1
Ovenbird – 1
Common Grackle – 3
Brown Headed Cowbird – 2 
House Sparrow – 4

Ms. Tymeson’s class observed or heard:
Pileated Woodpecker – 2
American Crow – 1
Tufted Titmouse – 1
American Robin – 4
Ovenbird – 1
Northern Cardinal – 3
Common Grackle – 2
House Sparrow – 5

Ms. Uttberg’s class observed or heard:
Chimney Swift – 1
Tufted Titmouse – 1
Gray Catbird – 1
European Starling – 1
Ovenbird – 1
Northern Cardinal – 1
House Sparrow – 6

In the three classes that looked for birds over two different days we found a total of 14 different kinds of birds. Many other birds are likely inhabitants of the habitat surrounding the school. These include Red-tailed Hawk, Turkey Vulture, Eastern Bluebird, Black-capped Chickadee, Downy Woodpecker and Baltimore Oriole to name a few. We were not lucky enough to see them. Keep your eyes and ears open for them in the future.

Here is a composite list of the birds we saw in our two days of exploring.
Chimney Swift (the bird that nests inside the chimney of the school)
Pileated Woodpecker (the largest woodpecker of New York State)
Blue Jay
American Crow
Tufted Titmouse
House Wren
American Robin
Gray Catbird (the bird that mimics other birds and usually ends it’s song with a meowww)
European Starling
Ovenbird (the bird that sings “teacher, teacher, teacher”)
Northern Cardinal
Common Grackle
Brown Headed Cowbird (the bird that lays its eggs in the nest of other birds)
House Sparrow (nesting in the school bell near the front door of the 1st grade wing)

On Tuesday, June 5th I did a lesson on studying owls.  As part of this lesson we discussed what owls like to eat.  To learn more about the owl predator behavior and what might be their most favored foods we dissected owl pellets.  Here is what we discovered.

Ms. Romano’s class took apart 11 pellets and found 32 mice, 0 shrews, 1 mole and 1 bird
Ms. Follansbee’s class took apart 10 pellets and found 26 mice, 0 shrews, 0 moles and 0 birds
Ms. Janssen’s class took apart 110 pellets and found 23 mice, 2 shrews, 0 moles and 0 birds

These results support my hypothesis that mice are the most favored food, while shrews make up the second choice and moles and birds are tied for third place. The difference though between shrews and moles and birds is very small. It would be best to dissect more pellets to see if in fact shrews are eaten more often that moles and birds. Students might check the archives on this blog to see what other students have found in previous owl ecology sessions.  Add these findings to what we have found here at Lynnwood.  Does this new data support or contradict my hypothesis?