Bird Spotting

Time

4 3 2 1 Early-Mid Stages

Benefits

What you need

Book of garden birds - or source images online
A quiet and comfortable space by the window overlooking the garden

Intro

Spotting feathery friends is a lovely way to engage the mind and stir up happy memories. Do this activity along with a Bird Book which has bright, colourful pictures and interesting information about each bird to help promote discussion. We’d recommend this as a one-to-one activity.

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!

The Activity

Invite your bird spotter to sit facing the window and start a conversation about what can be seen
Encourage them to see if they can see any birds, and then invite them to look through the pictures or book to try and match up the bird with the image
Read any text about the birds from the book/images
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?
If people don’t want to bird spot, that’s ok, they might simply enjoy looking through the images and reading the notes on them