Last week Club Wild joined schools up and down the country to take part in the RSPB Big Schools’ Birdwatch. The Schools’ Birdwatch started in 2001 and since then 2000 schools have been involved with 90,000 pupils getting out their binoculars to become real citizen scientists.
Over the last few weeks we have been getting things ready. We had great fun making bird feeders out of recycled bottles and cartons and we also made an information dial to help us identify our garden birds. We hung out our bird feeders in the wildlife area in the thicket of trees at the front of the school and making sure that our bird feeders are filled up regularly, we could hear and see that the birds were visiting the feeders.
On the day we carefully set up our bird hide in the thicket of trees, using camouflage netting to hide behind and waited patiently and very quietly. The birds soon came in numbers and it was great to see our usual friends of blue tits, coal tits, great tits, sparrows, wood pigeons and a robin. The birds loved our recycled feeders and we noted that most of the birds went for the seed rather than the fat balls. It is great get so close to the birds.
Back in school we submitted our results to the RSPB who will gather together all the data from the Big Schools Birdwatch with the data from the Big Garden Birdwatch. We can compare our results to last year and see if we notice any differences.The RSPB uses the data to monitor long term bird populations and the analysed results are published in March. The annual birdwatch is as great thing to do.
