A bird buffet

I couldn't think of a collective noun for all of the different species of bird that visited our feeders this morning, nor could I believe my eyes. I don't think we have ever had this many birds on our feeders at one time, so I had to take a video to prove to myself later how many there actually were! It is too large to upload to blogger, so you can see it on youtube here.

Whilst we were watching this volery of long tailed, blue, great and coal tits and greenfinches, I noticed another less familiar bird hiding among the honeysuckle berries. Dunnock-like in shape, but with a white nape, I didn't get a good look at first. Eventually it did return and turned out to be a beautiful little Whitethroat.

Project Wild Thing: Day 1

Wow, what a fantastic first day we've had! At the school I work, our final few days before the summer break are 'Curriculum Enhancement Week' days. A colleague and I have decided to run our own activity this year: Project Wild Thing (inspired by the film 'Project Wild Thing' and The Wild Network). Four days of 'wild time'.

Our first day has been spent mainly looking at minibeasts: signs to look for, different ways of recording and identifying, and the thing the pupils enjoyed most - catching them!

After a walk around the grounds to look for the best places, we let our students loose with cameras and tasked them to take 10 photos of any insect or other invertebrate they could. Whilst they were busy, we took the same opportunity, finding some stunning Cinnabar moth caterpillars which were spotted by one of our pupils. Our minibeast hunt was also interrupted by a common toad underneath one of our mobile classrooms!


After we had sufficient photos, we introduced our pupils to iSpot. They quickly got used to navigating the website and were excited by the speed with which some of their finds were identified. They were also fans of the quizzes once they had found them too!

After lunch, we took sweep nets and pooters out onto the school field. I think it would be fair to say that this was the part they enjoyed most... some of them picked up the technique really quickly and made some very good discoveries:

	Red soldier beetle?
		Cricket
Cricket before release		A pooter full of minibeasts

We couldn't identify everything we found, but are hoping that iSpot will give us some suggestions. If any readers have any ideas, please do comment to help us out. I think they were surprised at just how many different things we could find in just a couple of patches of long grass. There was also much excitement when one pupil caught a red tailed bumblebee and a gatekeeper butterfly in the same net!

At the very end of the day, we set up out camera trap and two mammal print traps (below) that we will check out tomorrow (Day 2). Our second day is going to focus on mammals and birds. I hope they enjoy it as much as they seemed to today.

Spring Strumpshaw Spectacles

It's official. Spring is here! The swallows, house martins and sand martins told me so at Strumpshaw Fen today. It wasn't only members of the Hirundinidae family we saw either, the marsh harriers were out in full force, as were some common lizards that appeared out of nowhere. You can see all of the species we spotted in my diary entry here, along with a couple of sketches for #dabday (Draw A Bird Day) today.

It was beautiful, if breezy day, and as I was a with a friend who had not been to the reserve before, we had a long stomp about, down all of the possible paths and visited both hides. There seemed to be marsh harriers in whichever direction we looked; often with at least four in the sky at any one time. One was carrying something around in his talons whilst we were watching, possibly nesting material. Even though you're almost guaranteed to see them here, today was spectacular for views of them in flight.

One of the marsh harriers

Pair of marsh harriers circling

Our other surprise finds of the day were three common lizards hiding on a little track, two of which gave us enough time to take a few shots!

Common lizard basking in the sunshine

In the woods we also saw two nuthatch clambering up two trees, another first for the year for me. There were also several pairs of great crested grebe on the water. It is amazing the difference that only a few weeks can make; last time I was here, it was cold, muddy, wet, and although still a beautiful place, very brown. Today, it was bright, green and had that beautiful earthy and boggy smell wherever we went. The birds were all in full song too, even if they didn't always show themselves. There were even a few bluebells starting to show their nodding heads. I think our next visit will have to be the ancient woodland of Foxley Woods to see the carpets of bluebells. I'll keep my fingers crossed that they are as spectacular as last year!

Blue tit update:

As of Monday 7th April, this was the progress made by the blue tits in their nest!

Wildlife at Work

This is my first proper post about attempting to get the pupils I teach involved in wildlife, so for those of you who are not familiar with the school environment, I will give you a short introduction. Schools are interesting places to work. Each day is never quite the same, they can be brilliant, and they certainly have their challenges too. But, unlike some would lead you to believe, it is not all doom and gloom! We do have fun (pupils and staff alike), and there are lots of opportunities to get involved in almost anything...

2013 and 2014 Big Schools'
Birdwatch certificates

I run STEM Club at my school, that is 'Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths' Club. As part of this, I have managed to purchase and set up some great wildlife resources, like a bird box with installed camera that my tutor group and I are keeping close tabs on, and our bird feeders that are set up near the library -  a big help for the Big Schools' Birdwatch!

Noctuid moth chrysalis'

I also have a pop up 'butterfly garden'. I am planning on ordering the painted lady caterpillars that come as part of it soon, but at present I am guardian of seven moth chrysalis' (I've recently learnt they are not cocoons, because cocoons are the silky protection around the chrysalis). They have been in hibernation since the beginning of December, just after the caterpillars were saved from the greenhouse and delivered to my lab. After doing some research, it seems they may be Noctuid or owlet moths, but with over 35,000 known species of this type of moth, I think I'll have to wait until they emerge to really find out what they are!

We are also having discussions about what we're going to do with our 'wildlife garden' and 'nature area'. The wildlife garden once had a pond, but hasn't for a long time, and we want to get it back to how it should be, with a complete pond and wildflowers to make it a haven for wildlife once more. That will then make it a brilliant resource for the ecology based projects that the science department carry out, and as an extra-curricular resource too. Our nature area also has some fantastic aims; there will be raised beds to grow fruit and vegetables, there are the beginnings of an orchard, and there will be swathes of wildflowers to help the honey bees that we keep. This is a fantastic time because we are just starting to flesh out our ideas about exactly what to include and how we're going to do it, and the pupils will be helping us a lot with that.

I will finish with some of the action from our bird box thus far - the blue tits have been very busy this week, today in particular, and their nest seems to be almost ready! They are causing so much excitement, even in our year 11 and sixth form classes. Anyone walking down the corridor must wonder what's going on when there is a sudden "Oh! There's a BIRD!"

Date: 17th March 2014

Date: 18th March 2014

Date: 18th March 2014

Date: 18th March 2014

Date: 18th March 2014

Date: 31st March 2014