Bird Spotting

Spotting feathery friends is a lovely way to engage the mind and stir up happy memories. Our Active Minds Bird Book is designed with bright, colourful pictures and interesting information about each bird, making it the perfect companion to the bird feeder – and a great way to promote discussion. Although you can use it on its own too. We’d recommend this as a one-to-one activity.

You’ll need

1. Active Minds Bird Book
2. A quiet and comfortable space by the window overlooking the garden

The Activity

1. Invite your bird spotter to sit facing the window and start a conversation about what can be seen
2. Encourage them to see if they can see any birds, and then invite them to look through the book to try and match up the bird with the image
3. Turn each page and read aloud the text about the birds, drawing your bird spotter’s attention back to the garden every few pages
4. Promote conversation around the birds they see
   o   Have they seen this species before?
   o   What time of year do they usually see it?
   o   What memories (if any) does the bird stir up?
5. If people don’t want to bird spot, that’s ok, they might simply enjoy looking through the images and reading the text about them

Top tip

Turn this into a bird spotting group activity, where everybody’s given a notepad and pencil to jot down the types of bird they see. After a set length of time, see who’s spotted the most and award them a small prize!