This site has films you can watch with your students and asks students to be urban bird watchers in their own community and submit data online about what they find. Imagine how much more meaningful this unit would be if students are actively involved in the scientific community as data collectors on the topic you are studying.
I would inform them of this role as part of the unit opener and ask them to get started by taking careful notes on one of the films from their web site.
Here are some other unit opener ideas for the City Wildlife Unit.
We are about to start our unit opener. We are dividing our class into different groups and they are visiting expert classes. Each teacher is the “expert” on one of the preselected city wildlife animals. We have squirrels, rats, pigeons, etc.. I will focus on the falcon. I will show the following video clip; http://www.citybirds.com/Flicks/RTHawkOne/RTHawkOneMovieFast.html and I am preparing a gallery walk for students to write down concepts and questions on City Wild life. The students will not be able to rotate to all experts. As a follow-up activity the students are “take one, share one” where they are now the experts and sharing their learning with other students in their class.