 You don't need a doctorate degree in the ratio of primary wing feather lengths to foraging pressure caused by non-native species to become a "biologist." Take the kids, walk out the door, and go for a walk; they see things that preoccupied adults never find. You may just prove to your significant other that there is more to your persona than an afternoon at the health club or on the couch watching college football.
After the next big windy day blows through town, take a sack or a bucket and cruise through your backyard, the local park, or just down the block. If nothing else, it will keep the neighbors up at night wondering what you really do in your spare time. See what Mother Nature's winds have blown to the ground for your "science class" to find and appreciate. Look at the bird nest in your hands, and see what it is made of. Is everything natural materials? How much is man's offal? Where did it come from - plants in your yard, the neighbor's compost pile, or the construction site down the block? How does the size of the nest match up to the birds that scatter away when you open the front door?
 See if you can find where it fell from and put it back in place. Almost all birds are unable to smell, so your handling of the nest will not cause some hard-working hummingbird to have to start all over again. Listen to the litany of questions coming from your kids as you work through the "scientific data" you find; follow your own questions that arise, solve the riddle. Check under overhead lines and poles for droppings or feathers. What kind or bird did the feather come from, is it molting, how old is the bird? Go after the answers; keep digging until you get one that fits. Most owls (yes, owls do live in the urban world) regurgitate a pellet of undigested fur and bones from their food. Are you brave enough to tear that pellet apart to find out what the owl ate? Need some help? Go to the library, buy a field guide to Western Birds, or do a web search for bird identification or life histories.
 Hey, your own logic and intuition have a lot of merit as well, at least with the really young kids. Each bit of matter tells a story. From that tale come more clues that invite inquisitive minds to solve the mystery of the matter's very existence. This beats the heck of watching some fictional actor fresh out of rehab solving some bogus crime; this is your child's mind actively seeking out and answering the puzzles that nature offers, and you may even find it gets you all pumped up too. Even though I have been working for over twenty years in biological pursuits, I find that I am constantly amazed at what there is in my own yard that I have never noticed before, just because I made myself really look, think, then start asking questions. Human nature is such that you will be unable to leave those questions unanswered. What has caught the eye's focus and the mind's attention could be nothing more than an errant toy tossed over a fence, a piece of trash blown by the morning wind, or … a little jewel of information that will soon provide hours of enjoyment in answering the question, "What is that?"
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