This Christmas - Connect with Nature

Christmas is a time for giving, and a time for family. What a great opportunity to start a family tradition of giving back to the earth and instilling the values of sustainable living to your children, friends and community. Start an annual, earth-friendly Christmas family tradition! It will also get you outdoors for a few hours to build an appetite for the big dinner.

Annual Christmas Day Bird Count - take your binoculars, a field guide to local birds, a small pad or journal for each participant and walk a course through your neighborhood, local park or countryside. Try to identify and count every bird you see, and make a note of it in your journal. At the end of the hike, list the species seen and number of birds per species. There's always a surprising discovery, and the activity highlights the presence and value of our feathered friends. Compare the results from former years and you'll become experts on your local bird population and migration habits. This is a great family activity because even the youngest eyes are just as good at spotting the birds and contributing to the event. For more information, see our page Annual Bird Count

Family nature hike - a peaceful walk through nature on Christmas day will be remembered and valued more than the score of the football game.

Nature restoration activity - planting a small tree together symbolizes the value of nature and offsets the 'taking' of the Christmas tree. An hour spent cleaning up or enhancing a natural area also enriches the giver and acknowledges nature as the source of our well-being.Decorate a tree for the birds - place seed bells, suet, pine cones with peanut butter and seed trays on any tree in your yard, preferably a tree in the open where cats can be seen easily by the birds. To attract a wide variety of birds, use varied seed types such as black oil sunflower seed, wild bird mixed seed and nyger seed bells. This is a great activity for kids, and offers an important food source for birds during the winter.

Read more: How to have a 'green' Christmas, Eartheasy.com

Backyard Birders Do Citizen Science

Project FeederWatch lets birders participate in a citizenscience survey without leaving their back yards.

Run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N. Y., and Bird Studies Canada, a nonprofit research group in Ontario, the project involves about 15,000 volunteers across the continent who make lists of all the birds that show up at their backyard feeders from November to early April. The collaboration began about 20 years ago, when Erica Dunn, an ornithologist who started the Ontario Bird Feeder Survey in 1976, realized that a larger survey would be better able to track population and migration trends. She approached the Cornell Lab about starting a similar study in the United States, and their joint effort enrolled 4,000 volunteers in 1987, its first year.

Project FeederWatch is a great way to learn about birds, with the support of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and countless other birders, accessible by e-mail. A $ 15 fee includes instructions, a handbook about birds and bird feeding, a poster with color illustrations of common feeder birds, a calendar, data forms and return envelopes. Records can also be submitted online.
More information is at www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw.

Read more: Backyard birders do citizen science
BY ANNE RAVER NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE