* is ready for downloading! The set contains a full color page of all nine birds, an identical b&w page for coloring, a set of name cards, play ideas, and individual coloring worksheets for each of the following birds:Red-Tailed Hawk
American Robin
American Crow
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Pileated Woodpecker
Northern Cardinal
Scarlet Tanager
After creating the page featuring all nine birds together, I printed a copy for my 12yo son to color. He used Hunting Red
He scanned the completed page, and printed it on cardstock to see how it looked. Beautiful! I laminated the colored bird page, along with the name cards, and cut them all out. Then it was off to the park to play Bird Search — which is exactly like hunting for Easter eggs, but the fun is year-round!
The children stayed on the playground while I went to a little stand of trees nearby. I hid some birds in the branches of the evergreens, some on the ground under those branches, and some I stuck into the bark of a deciduous tree.
I laid out the name cards on the ground so the children could place each bird with its name as they found them. For my 5yo, I added the encouragement of “hot and cold”: “You’re getting warmer, warmer…oh, colder now, warm, burning! You found it!”
After all the birds had been found, we played 2 more times – once with my boys hiding them for their little sister, and once I helped her hide them for her big brothers. Each time we moved to a new location in the park.
I hope you enjoy the printable set! It was fun to create and plan to make additional sets based on the other flora and fauna of Hunting Red
You can download the free set by clicking here, and share this post with those who enjoy it! Also, a special thanks to Deborah Leigh for use of her snail picture on the Scarlet Tanager worksheet!
As always, books marked with an * are affiliate links, and you can read our full disclosure at the bottom of the About page!
Pocket Mouse Publishing 
These look gorgeous. Now I need you to move to Australia and make some for our wildlife 😉
Australia is on my list of places to sail! Of course, I plan to do this years from now! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by.
~Lee
Your worksheets look lovely with helpful facts and colouring in too.
Thank you — they were fun to make and research, and got us outside to play with!
~Lee
What a lovely idea 🙂 We don’t have those birds here but I think my 3 year old would still enjoy going on a bird hunt in our garden! #outdoorplayparty
I hope you have fun hunting in the garden! I’ve been enjoying the ideas you’ve shared at Outdoor Play Party!
~Lee
Oh I love this! What a great way to get the little ones learning about all the birds around them!!
Yes! It has really gotten us to be more aware of birds of all kinds.
Thanks for stopping by!
~Lee
Great idea! I have been seeing a lot of red birds flit by me, and they are definitely not all male cardinals. This also reminds me of a bird coloring book I need to dig for in my book pile. I read that coloring birds, besides being fun and a great way to relax, is also a great way to learn about detail that will come in handing for bird watching/identification. Come to think of it, it sounds a lot more fun than TV, too, which I am trying to step away from much more often.
Thanks also for visiting me at fpnaturalist.com. My latest amateur birding foray (http://fpnaturalist.com/2015/03/31/bird-by-bird/) was quite fun, and maybe part of the fun is that I have so much more to learn!
Dover has some great realistic bird coloring books! And posts like yours and an article about learning to be a birder: http://blog.nature.org/science/2015/04/20/zero-to-hero-birding-edition/ have inspired me to want to continue studying birds!
Glad you stopped by!
~Lee