For The Birds

This weekend our little family

went to the

Idaho Center For Birds Of Prey.

These are a couple of cool post cards I picked up there,
pictured on them are some of the birds we saw.

My husband had the opportunity to take a Birds of Prey class
the first week of January and was so excited to share
all the cool things he had learned with us.

The center had all sorts of activities for kids and their families
plus ~bonus~ it was free to get in that day!

It was a great excuse to go for sure!

My daughter has been a bit of a bird lover

for several years now, so this definitely was perfect for her.

The thing is, I didn't realize how much I would enjoy it too!

They had several live birds~falcons & eagles, even a pair of California Condors.
There were also plenty of "preserved" birds to look at too.:)
We spent most of the afternoon out bird watching,
we even spotted a great horned owl!
He was refusing to pose for the picture....

Then we came home to mount the bird boxes

we built on my birthday.

You can find several plans on the internet for building these simple boxes.

The Birds of Prey even have a great set of directions!

Click here to get them!
They are all simple straight cuts and each box costs about $10 to make!

We didn't realize that most owls and falcons do not build their own nests

so we are hoping to lure a few into our yard.

Of course only smaller ones that don't eat squirrels!:)

There is also a great app we found that was amazing!
It's called iBird Explorer Pro 5.

It's on sale right now and a must for bird lovers!
It has an amazing library of bird calls and facts.
We learned that most birds begin to migrate
back to Northern America in February
so we're going to have our eyes peeled!

What fun and educational things do you know about
in your neck of the woods?