It was great to meet all of you this past Thursday, and I’m already looking forward to the coming Tuesday to get out and see some birds! One of the most important aspects to enjoying (and getting the most out of) these morning expeditions is dressing for the weather.
- The first thing you should do is take a look at the “What to Wear” tab at the top of the page, to get an idea of how to dress for the outdoors appropriately. But you can also do a little more to plan ahead…
- Check the weather! There are plenty of ways online to check the weather for the morning–read this post from last year to get a look at the tools I use to plan our trips.
- Check the blog! I’ll try and post the location of our next excursion at least a day in advance (usually based on the weather tools from #2). This will also give you some idea about the kind of birding we’ll be doing: is it in the open? Will we be in a forest? If you want to get notified when the blog is updated, try subscribing to the RSS feed (instructions here).
- Get a good night’s rest! Waking up early is tough-I know! It might seem simple, but getting even an extra half-hour of sleep can mean the difference between stumbling thru the morning and seeing some really great birds.
- Look at your bird guide a little bit before coming on Tuesday morning (and bring the book with you). Get a sense of the diversity of shapes and sizes of birds and their various parts and field marks. It will also help you find a given bird in the book when looking for it!
So-if you have any questions, feel free to post them here in the comments–right now it looks like we’ll be moving the class time up to 7:45 AM, so I’ll see you bright and early on Tuesday morning…(weather currently forecasted to be between 30 and 35 degrees during class!)
