Last Friday we invited Mrs. Sweeney our Falkirk Ranger to help us with ideas for improving the biodiversity in our woods to get level two in our John Muir Award.
When we stopped at the horse chestnut tree we found a few conkers but behind the sycamore tree we found a path and it took us to some goose grass. It got its name because geese come and eat it at winter. There were old house parts like washing poles, fences and old lights. I think there must have been a house there long ago. Mrs. Sweeney said she went on a survival course. She had to make string from nettles.
On the way to the woods Mrs Sweeney stopped at some plants and she told us about them. One of them was a hawthorn bush. Indians thought it smelled of death. From the hawthorn bushes you could make jerky and wine. The hogweed is native to our country but the giant hogweed belongs to Asia. The rosebay willow herb is also called “poor man’s asparagus”. The last one we saw was mugwort and on it we found some banded brown- lipped snails.
When we got to the woods Mrs. Sweeney said she had a little mammal in her box. We had all sorts of crazy ideas for what it could be. It was a bat. She said it was a pipistrelle bat. Bats are nocturnal. A pipistrelle bat weighs the same as a pound coin. Bats are the only mammal that can fly. Bats eat up to 3000 insects a day. They help to pollinate plants. Bats use echolocation to hunt. This is when the bat makes high- pitched sounds and they come back to them if something is in its way. We are hoping to improve the biodiversity in the wood by building bat boxes.
We had a short time before we had to go back so we went to a pond where a mine shaft used to be. It got flooded because the River Forth tide came in and it breached the mine walls.
We looked at a map made in 1898 that was 112 years ago. We saw on the map there used to be cottage in our woods so next week we are going to see if we can find any remains.