I don’t think young people today can truly appreciate the power of the Internet. By young people I mean anyone 50 or younger! Sure, they can surf the Internet and locate all kinds of stuff as well as download apps that only confuse us older folks, but truly appreciate that…I don’t think so.

When I was working on my two advanced degrees 30 years ago, I had to write a couple of theses dealing with “original” research. My first one was titled “The Inadequate Teaching of Science in the Elementary Grades.” At the time there weren’t “science” teachers in the elementary classrooms. The teacher was a “self-contained” classroom teacher, and she/he taught everything. The vast majority of those teachers were more language and history oriented, not science.

Their science education all too often consisted of a single eight-week class they took in their “professional semester”.

My second thesis was on the reptiles and amphibians of central Nebraska. It was a lot more fun to do “original” research catching the creepy crawlers than to analyze survey responses of elementary teachers.

In addition, both involved extensive library research.

I loved the library research. I could lose myself for literally hours following one journal article to another trying to tease out a new or different “fact” that I could use in my theses. Today I can do the same thing, but I don’t have to go to the library at UNK or the biology library at UNL, I can sit in my office and go from link to link on the Internet. So much easier!

I can also surf the “net” and randomly find fun and interesting sites. Just recently I “discovered” a newspaper site for THE TENNESSEAN. Now, as you might guess this newspaper covers mostly Tennessee news.

However, it also published a story on the results of “Project FeederWatch”, another effort by the Cornell Bird Lab.

FeederWatch starts when the migration season ends in November and it simply involves counting the birds at your feeder over the winter, ending in April.

You then upload your data to the Cornell Lab. There is a subscription fee of $18, but that provides you with the year-end summary, posters of feeders and birds, a calendar, and digital access to “Living Birds” magazine. The subscription fee also funds the project.

As part of FeederWatch the Cornell Lab publishes a summary of the most common birds in every county in the U.S. That is what THE TENNESSEAN published on their website. According to FeederWatch, in Dawson County Nebraska, the American goldfinch is the most common bird seen at the feeders over the winter.

If you feed birds, that makes sense because in late winter they come to the feeders in droves.

The second most common bird is the dark-eyed junco. At my feeder the juncos were #1. You then have house sparrows and tree sparrows followed by robins, downy woodpeckers, blue jays, house finches and red-breasted nuthatches. Other common birds are the white-breasted nuthatch, cardinal, hairy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, northern flicker and pine siskin.

From my own observations I would have to say that the FeederWatch information, with the exception of the tree sparrow, is accurate for Gothenburg and my feeders.

I’ll keep buying birdseed. I’ll keep feeding the birds, and I’ll continue to appreciate the ability of the computer and Internet to locate information that 30 years ago would require a trip to Kearney or Lincoln. Nope, as always, youngsters have no idea how good they have it!