What’s been going on in Natural History Club this term?
This term, the Natural History Club has been attended and enjoyed by a number of students from Years 7 to 9, who have observed and learnt more about the wildlife including birds, mammals and invertebrates found around the school site.
We carried out a survey of spiders in the school grounds, the results of which were submitted to a national survey and included the nursery web spider and garden spider. The students had the opportunity to find out more about some of the 600 spider species found in the UK, and some of them even overcame their fears of spiders to get close enough to take pictures.
The Fungi foray proved popular, it’s amazing what you can find when you look down, like the tiny pleated inkcap mushroom, Parasola plicatilis and the dung roundhead, Protostropharia semiglobata which were both found on the field.
Dissection of an owl pellet (regurgitated hair and bones) was described by one of the students as the most gruesome but the best thing they had ever done and they were incredulous that some of the small pellets contained the remains of 3 small rodents!
Our pond dipping session revealed that the pond was not supporting the kind of species we would hope to see in a healthy pond, and we found a lot of indicators of poor water quality such as hog lice, water fleas and fish leeches. Thankfully, via our Nature Friendly Schools journey, funding, and practical support from Groundwork East, the pond has been redeveloped this week. Some students have helped out with removing the many cobbles and stones from around the pond as well as the bulrushes and flag iris, which had unfortunately caused damage to the existing liner. The Groundwork East staff were full of praise for the effort the students put in despite the cold and rain, they remained enthusiastic, resulting in a new pond being put in place over just two school days. We are going to let the pond fill naturally with rainwater and will return some of the pond plants such as water mint to the pond. We would welcome any native pond plants which may be surplus to requirements, please contact the school if you are able to help with this.
We would like to express our appreciation to any parents who have contributed to the collections for the nature area via Morrisons and Tesco, and of course to all of the students who have helped with the maintenance of the area, building of the raised beds and looking after the school grounds and wildlife by keeping it clear of litter and respecting the habitats.
More exciting projects will be developing and we can expect to see more use of our fantastic grounds during lessons, as well as for extra-curricular activities, as well as rewilding some of the important chalk grasslands on the edges of the field to improve biodiversity.
Natural History Club will continue to run on Wednesdays after school for all students from KS3 and I look forward to seeing some new faces in January, along with our current participants.
Keep looking out and looking after our wildlife!
Mrs Brooks
Science Teacher