20 Free and Exciting Bird Watching Activities Your Kids Will Love!

Calling all bird nerds! Here is a huge list of Backyard Bird feeders and bird watching activities for kids. A great way to get your kids to appreciate and conserve nature is to engage them in bird watching, have them build a bird feeder or other fun activities.

We have been bird watchers for as long as I can remember. We have several feeders in our yard and keep them full year-round. We take day trips to local areas such as Hawk Mountain and the Conowingo Dam to see the eagles when they are migrating.

As young as 4, my younger son was able to identify a few species. So I thought, “Hey, why not? It’s time to find him some other activities to do to foster this interest!” He now has his own binoculars and almost every day he’ll watch the feeders for a few minutes (he’s 8 now) and tell me who is there having a snack.

Bird Writing Pages

Here are the Bird Writing Pages.

Benefits of Bird Watching

• gives kids a greater appreciation for the environment
• gets you outdoors
• allows kids to enjoy the outdoors while you are still indoors

Backyard Bird Activities for Kids

This will teach kids how to create a bird friendly habitat. You can do this at home, or ask your school administrator for a patch of land somewhere on the school property.

Communities typically love projects like this and you could find it easy to solicit donations.

Bird Food Recipes

Make your own bird food? Why not?

And this one is really fun because you can hang them on trees in the winter.

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Turn your backyard into a Certified Wildlife Habitat for Birds

Bird Watching Worksheets

Bird Identification Game: Requires preparation and set up, FYI.

Bird Word Search

Work on literacy skills and birding at the same time!

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Bird Counting Worksheet

February is the Backyard Bird Count from the National Audubon Society and they also have many ways to get kids involved and interested in birds. They also have an online identification guide for birds and some quizzes.

There are tally sheets for bird counting in this PDF.

Bird Songs Website

Can you identify birds by their song? Find out here. The GBBC is also where you can go with your kids to log how many birds you see during the count.

Fantastic activity so that they see how we are all a part of the bigger picture–when they see other families from all over the nation doing the same thing!

When is the Backyard Bird Count?

Great Backyard Bird Count is always the second weekend of February.

BirdLog North America-It allows you to enter sightings into eBird from your phone. eBird is compatible with Backyard Bird Count. Although many field guide apps feature self-contained life lists, this app updates your eBird account, which is then accessible from any web browser. Your data also help build the overall eBird database used by scientists.

Bird Identification Apps

There are many out there, but Audubon, Peterson, and National Geographic are some of the biggest and most respected names out there in birding, so I am listing them. Plus, while I only have the first one, it is kid-friendly. Last year for Backyard Bird Count, there were some pretty expensive apps being offered for free. I will update this post if that happens again.

Audubon Birds Pro (821 species; 907 MB; $14.99; also available for Android)

Peterson Birds (820 species; 535 MB; $9.99; includes sounds from Macaulay Library)

Have fun and see you out there!