What a busy Friday I had! My fellow panda friends from
Borestone, Middleton Park and St. Ninian’s and some pupils visited Edinburgh Zoo to learn about the giant pandas and find out about the work being done by the staff at the zoo to protect and research about them. They were lucky enough to see both Yang Guang and Tian Tian. They learned that us Pandas can eat 40kg of bamboo a day and that there are two separate enclosures as they might not get along if they we’re put in together!
We hope the pupils have been inspired by their visit to go back to their schools and find out more about conservation issues in their local environments. I’m looking forward to seeing citizen science activities they’re taking part in; collecting data and using that data and passing it on to scientists. Some schools will be using the OPAL surveys to learn about air, soil and water quality in their school grounds and others will be using the BRISC surveys to investigate biodiversity.
Get blogging so I can read all about it!
Patrick the Panda
Tag Archives: #pandareporter
Patrick the Panda investigates ponds in Glasgow!
Patrick the panda is getting ready to go exploring the pond at Queens Park in Glasgow. He’ll be using the OPAL water survey to find out about the quality of the water there. Are there lots of invertebrates there or is the cold weather keeping them away?
Matt, the OPAL scientist, has provided Patrick the panda with a water survey pack – it has a guide to identifying different species. Patrick also used the guide to find out that if the water is healthy then there may be species such as dragonfly larvae, but if the water is not very good quality then he might only find species such as pond skaters and water shrimps.
After he’s surveyed the pond he’ll need to remember to submit his information to the OPAL website so that scientists can use it to better understand the health of Scotland’s ponds.
Why don’t you have a look at the OPAL website and see if there are surveys you could carry out in your school grounds.
Remember- Patrick will go with a sensible grown-up to look at the pond- make sure you do too!
The Panda Reporters are on the move!
Strange sightings were reported at Glasgow Airport this morning… 5 shadowy figures, each carrying a stick of bamboo were spotted at the arrivals gate in the early hours of the morning!
Have you seen them?
Where are they going?
They were carrying magnifying glasses, notebooks and pencils – looks like they’ve come here to find out what young people in Scotland are learning about our environment!
