Bird Beaks Are Neat!
/The Whales have had tremendous fun this week, exploring how birds fly. We created our own paper airplane birds with various wing shapes to see if they flew like the birds they represented. The Whales compared the flight of birds with active soaring wings, passive soaring wings, high speed wings and elliptical wings. We continued to investigate feathers under a magnifying glass, using colored pencils to sketch the rachis, vane and barbs.
On Tuesday, Whales looked closely at the beaks of birds, sharing in an active read-aloud where we tried to imagine what it might be like to catch and eat our food with beaks. Then we did some hands-on exploration of chisel beaks, spear beaks, tweezer beaks, seed-eating beaks, nectar beaks and straining beaks. We decided that having fingers (and forks!) is much easier!
We continue to learn more about our research birds. Whales are becoming ornithologists!
