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The lesson plans are designed to
assist the student in exploring the content of
birdcentral.net by utilizing mathematics, zoology, and
language arts.
Most of the lesson plans are based on
the Natural History Notes for each species in
birdcentral.net. Within the Natural History Notes there is
the section "Notes from A.C. Bent." These notes are excerpts
from The Life Histories of North American Birds., a
government project that was 40 years to finish. For example,
this is the entry from the Behavior section for the
Savannah
Sparrow:
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Behavior: The most
frequently occurring description of Savannah
sparrow behavior is that "it runs like a mouse
through the grass." This is certainly an apt phrase
since it has connotations of color, behavior, and
habitat and, in addition, neatly summarizes the
Savannah's mien.
Quay (1957), in his paper on
wintering Savannaha, summarizes his observations as
follows:
The Savannah sparrow was not
an easy bird to watch. When disturbed, it ran on
the ground more often than it flushed. Crouched low
to the ground, head down and stretched forward, it
ran quickly and quietly, taking advantage of all
cover and resembling a mouse more than a
bird.
When disturbed by a man
walking, Savannahs either moved onward on the
ground or took flight. Flights were usually short,
20 -70 feet, and practically never carried the bird
out of the plot. Flight was quick, erratic and only
a few inches above the vegetation.
Athough the Savannah sparrow
runs when disturbed, it hops when it feeds, and
sometimes scratches like a towhee. Quay (1958)
reports that the Savannahs "typically fed on the
ground, picking up seeds from the ground like a
chicken. The only times they were seen to take
seeds directly from plants were when snow and sleet
covered the bare ground." However, as the seeds
continue to scatter from the plants, the Savannahs
soon resume feeding on the surface of the
snow.
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The Life Histories of North
American Birds was a government sponsored project that
was begun in 1919 and finished sometime in the 1960's with
26 volumes of material covering over 600 species of birds.
A. C. Bent was the first editor of this large project. To
acquire the material that he needed he communicated with
living ornithologists and utilized the journals and letters
of historical naturalists and ornithologists. His list of
references includes John James Audubon, Alexander Wilson,
Thomas Nuttall, Major Charles E. Bendire, John Muir,
Florence Bailey, Margaret Nice, Leon Dawson, John Burroughs,
Theodore Roosevelt, and many others. Each species account
was many pages long and broken up into several sections
including Habitat Description, Spring Activities, Winter
Activities, Courtship, Nesting, Eggs, Plumage, Behavior, and
Conservation.
Selections from this monumental work
were chosen for birdcentral.net to provide a broad picture
of the activities that constitute the study of
ornithology.
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