John and Edward the Cockatiels come to visit.

Courtney brought her pet cockatiels in to visit the class.  She told us all about the birds and explained how she takes care of them.  Afterwards we wrote short reports about the cockatiels.  It was a really interesting visit.  Thanks Courtney.

John and Edward the Cockatiels

 

Starling

The starlings likes to eat bread, apples, insects, peanuts, oats and bird seeds.  Brown bread is the best for birds. They also eat bird suet.

 

Starlings are common in urban areas, and are frequent visitors to gardens and parks.

Starlings like to fly in groups.  They are noisy, lively birds.  A group of starlings is called a "murmuration".

The starling has a sharp beak.   It is brownish black, but it has oily feathers so it sometimes looks greenish-blue. It has a speckled breast and back.

Sharing our Research on our Wiki

Hello all,
We have a new Wiki site, http://www.birdsofbray.wikispaces.com/.
A wiki is a website that allows it's followers to add and edit information, pictures, videos, website links ...etc. 
Using this Wiki we will create an interactive encyclopedia of facts relating to the birds in our local area.  We hope the wiki will help us to share our learning with others and to learn from others. 

We look forward to having plenty of followers for our wiki. 

A Summer Project for you.

Taken from http://www.birdinfo.co.za/

While you are all on holidays I would like you to watch out for a very interesting bird which visits Ireland in the summer. This bird is called the Common Swift and you can see his picture on some Dublin buses. Swifts are the most aerial birds. They live entirely on flying insects and their legs are so short that, if thy land on the ground, they cannot get into the air again.The only time they land is to build a nest, usually under the roof of older buildings.The young Swifts that are just about ready to fly now will not touch the ground again until they make their first nest in two years time. They can sleep in the air by flying very high and drifting about. Swifts look black and scream as they fly chasing eachother. You will see them in the town centre. Early in August they all leave Ireland for Africa and will not be here again until next May.
Good birdwatching,
Dermot.

Some Summer Birdwatching News from Hannah

I have been birdwatching recently and the good weather encouraged me too.
I got  lovely surprises too.

IN PEOPLE'S PARK/THE RIVER DARGLE:
1.A pair of moorhens - two rare water birds that are black with red and yellow bills.They have long wading legs and are slightly smaller than a mallard duck.
2.Many families of mallard duck babies - some are much bigger than others look a few days old.
3.A few days old straggler baby mallard duck got lost with the strong current of the river water's waves.
He swam from the beginning of the river to the end with hope to find his parents and siblings and his determination was rewarded with being reunited with his family.
We wished we had had some bread to feed the ducks but we did not.
We stayed out for hours thrilled by Nature.
The mother then had to keep an eye on the straggler.
We love to watch them grow.
4.We saw six young gulls and one mother gull preening themselves on the rocks in the river.

BRAY HARBOUR:
1.We often go down to the harbour in Bray  to visit the Mute Swans,Chinese geese and the noisy gulls.
Myself and my sister brought a notebook to record what we saw.
We saw about a hundred mute swans and they chased us,honking and hissing loudly.
2.We saw some chinese geese and two yellow fluffy goslings!!!
We fed them our bread and observed them.
There were five geese,two goslings and about 100 mute swans too.


Birdwatching is great in Summer too!!!

From Hannah K

We went to the Robo Show in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra

A few days before the Day arrived we practised presenting our project to all the classes.
I loved teaching the children about how we use our blog and all about our project.
We made our Checklist so we could tick off what equipment we need we had prepared and ready.
When finally the Robo Fair Day arrived we got there and back by bus.
There were lots of other stalls too.
I liked that at the beginning each school gave a summary of their project - That was a lovely way to attract us to other stalls.
The project about special Movie Affects really interested me.
We used bird books,notebooks,binoculars,posters,laptops and Moscow souvenirs such as Bonnie The bear and photos.
On the stage photos were taken,certs presented,projects were sumarised.
Teachers and other interested children came to ask about our project and visit our stall.
We met childeren our own ages,younger,older,teachers and Deirdre.
I liked the Trains Project - the childern were very good at explaining about their project.
I loved the Movie Affects project,The film they made was very well acted and they used clever techniques too.
My favourite part was the Questionare and meeting the other children at the other stalls.
Then the time to go back arrived we wished the day would repeat itself.
The End !!!

by Hannah K

Birds of Bray attend the Empowering Minds Robo Show

Our class was invited to present our project at this years Empowering Minds Robo Show, in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra.
This show is held every year to give primary school classes the opportunity to share their work with digital tools with others.  We had a really wonderful time meeting pupils from the other schools and talking to them about their projects.  It was also great to have people come to talk to us about our project.  We know plenty about birds now, and about writing blogs, so we were delighted to show off all we had done.  We can't wait till next year.  Hopefully we'll have a new project to show off then.

Have a look at our slideshow to see how much fun we had during our day in St Patrick's College.