← Back to course
Backyard Explorer 3 to 5 / Week 10 / Explorer Day
6/6
Week 10 · Seasons and Migration

Explorer Day

Explorer Day: The Month Data Check
// Reading the months as data
⏱ about 15 min

Explorer Day: The Month Data Check

Rocket zips up his jacket and grabs the field guide. "Today we test the data!" he says.

Raven tucks her notebook under her arm. "We check which birds we see against their months."

Nova floats ahead to the park path. "Record everything," she says. "A record that matches is good data. One that does not match is interesting data."

  1. Seasons change the light, the warmth and the food in a habitat.
  2. Animals answer winter in three ways: move, rest, or stay and change.
  3. The "Seen most" months in the field guide are data from sighting records.
  4. A bar graph has a title, labels, a scale and bars. Taller bars mean bigger numbers.
◇ EXPLORER DAY: CHECK THE MONTHS
Open your bird field guide. Write today's month at the top of a notebook page.
Go outside with your grown-up for fifteen minutes. Sit still or walk slowly.
Each time you see a bird, write a tally mark. Try to match it to a guide name if you can.
For each bird you can name, check its "Seen most" months. Does today's month match?
Make a two-column table: matches and does not match.
Back inside, draw a bar graph of your tallies. One bar for each bird you named.
Talk together: what might explain any bird that did not match?
Safety first
Stay with your grown-up the whole time.
Look with your eyes. Never touch a bird, a nest, an egg or a feather on the ground.
Keep to paths. Do not pick plants or mushrooms you do not know.
Wash your hands when you get home.
For a grown-up
Your child does not need to name every bird. Tallies count even for "unknown bird".
Ask: if a bird is here outside its "Seen most" months, what could explain that?
Good answers: it stays all year, it is passing through, or few people recorded it.
EXPLORER DAY CHECK
  • Read the question.
  • Tap your answer.
You see a bird in a month that is not in its "Seen most" list. What does that mean?
What goes along the bottom of your Explorer Day bar graph?
What do we call a picture of data with bars that stand for groups?
WHY THIS EXERCISEA bar graph shows counts as bars so you can compare them at a glance.

Great data checking, explorer! Next week we ask what happens when a habitat itself changes.

← Friday