For the last 6 days, I have been to 3 different schools. Firstly, the very big St. George's. Here I did birds surveys, sweep netting and pollinator surveys. I was surprised by how many different plants there were, but they were just for show and lacked little insect life. Though the amount of woodland bird species and the herd of deer there was impressive, it is due to the surroundings and not the careful management of the school grounds. Secondly, we went to the very small Godolphin school i...
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I believe the schools I visited last week have been the best so far for wildlife. For the first two days I was at Eton End. I did bird surveys where species that I have not yet seen whilst doing the project included great spotted woodpecker, blackcap and willow warbler. Their pond looked amazing with many newts and water boatmen, but sadly we also found a couple of dead frogs. We were unsure whether to put the moth trap out or not due to the bad weather, but we decided to do it - and we weren...
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The first three days of this week I was at Esher College carrying more surveys. I did sweep netting in the car park where I collected a bush cricket, rosemary beetles and more. On the field I carried out bird and butterfly surveys and tried to identify every tree around the edge. In longworth traps we had set up, we had 2 field mice. On the trail cameras, we had foxes, green woodpeckers and many magpies. The last two days of this week I spent at Jubilee High School. They had an abandoned pond...
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The project I am taking part in is about doing ecological surveys on school grounds. The team already started last week without me (I was enjoying the sun in Menorca) and I started on Wednesday. We were at Englefield Green Infant School. The team introduced me to the different equipment, including the moth trap they set up the day before, mammal traps which didn't seem to be tripping and trail cameras that have captured many feet! My main interest is ornithology and so I was allowed to do a b...
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