We have two nest boxes fitted with cameras. Our original B&W birdcam box was set up outside the Infant classroom in March 2007; this was replaced by the new Colour Infant Birdcam box in 2014. Another Colour Birdcam box was installed round the back of the school, outside the kitchen, in 2008. Still images are uploaded to the birdcam pages every 10-15 seconds.
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The Blue tits have completed their nest and at least one egg has been laid. However, since yesterday, a wasp has started building a nest on the camera lens. We removed the residue from the lens this morning but it returned to recommence building during the day. The Blue tits also continued to visiting the nest, giving our first glimpse of an egg. After school, we managed to catch and dispose of the wasp. We will have to wait and see whether the Blue tits win the battle and continue to lay their eggs.
An egg! -April 23rd
The moth trap was set up on the night of 18th April and emptied the following morning by Kingfisher Class. Temperatures had reached 23ºC on the 18th and dropped to 11ºC during the night.
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- Brindled Beauty
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- Pale Pinion
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- Pine Beauty
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- Chestnut
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- Water Carpet
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- Twin-spotted Quaker
67 moths of 15 different species were recorded, 4 of which were new species for the school garden (shown in bold).
Small Quaker 3, Early Grey 4, Satellite 3, Clouded Drab 7, Common Quaker 23, Hebrew Character 15, Engrailed 1, Water Carpet 2, Twin-spotted Quaker 1, Brindled Beauty 1, Diurna fagella 1, Pine Beauty 1, Brindled Pug 1, Pale Pinion 1, Chestnut 3.
It’s been a few years since birds have nested in our bird boxes which are fitted with cameras. Today, we switched on the camera in the box near the school kitchen and spotted two Blue tits visiting the box with nesting material. Keep watching the colour birdcam box and let us know what you see.
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- Blue tit visiting April 13th
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- The nest grows! April 16th
Peregrine Class identifying moths
The moth trap was set up by the hide on the night of April 8th, 2018 and was emptied by Peregrine Class the following morning. Mr Marriot arrived early and potted up any moths on the outside of the trap before our resident nesting Rooks could eat them! Our eagle-eyed children still managed to spot some he missed, they were very well camouflaged!
Eleven different species of moth were identified and a total of 69 moths were counted. Five were new species for the school garden (listed in bold below).
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- Hebrew Character
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- Common Quaker
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- Early Tooth-striped
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- The Satellite
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- Engrailed
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- Shoulder Stripe
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- Early Grey
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- Diurnea fagella
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- Clouded Drab
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- Small Quaker
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- Mottled Grey
Early Grey 3, Hebrew Character 37, Shoulder Stripe 3, Clouded Drab 9, Small Quaker 6, Common Quaker 4, Satellite Moth 1, Engrailed 1, March Tubic (Diurnea fagella) 2, Early Tooth-striped 1, Mottled Grey 1.
After Christmas, the whole school took part in the Big Schools Birdwatch. The most common bird was the Rook, with just under 50 sightings. We were also lucky to see lots of the glamorous Bullfinch. This year we saw a few rare birds; the Siskin and the Redwing! But unfortunately, for the first time ever, we had no luck in spotting a Tree Sparrow. A total of 19 different species of birds were seen.
Report by LK and BP Year 4
| Numbers seen | |||
| Species | 19/01/2018 | 02/02/2018 | 02/02/2018 |
| Blackbird | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Blue tit | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| Bullfinch | 10 | 9 | 8 |
| Chaffinch | 2 | 5 | 1 |
| Collared dove | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Feral pigeon | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Goldfinch | 3 | 5 | 2 |
| Great tit | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Greenfinch | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| House sparrow | 4 | 2 | 0 |
| Jackdaw | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Longtailed tit | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Magpie | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Redwing | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Robin | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Rook | 6 | 18 | 25 |
| Siskin | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Woodpigeon | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Wren | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Total number of birds: | 38 | 55 | 68 |
| Total species | 12 | 14 | 15 |
When we returned to school in September, we were pleased to find some fruit and vegetables had grown well over the summer. The Buddleia, Ice Plant and other plants were in full flower and attracted large numbers of insects especially Red Admiral Butterflies. On one day we counted 24 Red Admirals! Sue, our cook, also picked some of the flowering herbs and used them to make mini flower baskets using a carefully peeled orange.
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- Prickly cucumbers
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- Some of our huge pears!
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- Lots of onions
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- Flower basket
The moth trap was set up on the evening of 11th May and emptied the following morning. Just two moths were trapped, both were Hebrew Characters.
The moth trap was set up on the evening of 27th April and emptied the following morning. There were 5 moths of 3 different species:
Clouded Drab 3, Hebrew Character 1 and V-pug 1 (New for school grounds).
V-pug
Today we sowed runner beans to sell later this term. They will cost 20p per plant!
The moth trap was set up on the evening of 23rd April and emptied the following morning. 5 moths of 4 different species were trapped:
Hebrew Character 2, Common Quaker 1, Clouded Drab 1, 1 Waved Umber (new for school garden).
Waved Umber
The moth trap was set up on the first time this year on the evening of 6th April and emptied the following morning. Mr Marriot kindly covered up the trap when he arrived in the morning so that our resident rooks couldn’t breakfast on our catch!
Nine moths of four different species were trapped, two of which were new species (shown in bold) for the school grounds:
1 Early Grey, 2 Clouded Drab, 5 Hebrew Character, 1 Shoulder Stripe.
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- Clouded Drab
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- Hebrew Character
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- Early Grey
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- Shoulder Stripe
Four members from Peregrine Class planted around 150 onions, some red and some white. We hope that Sue will cook us some delicious meals with them!
Thank you Peregrine Class for all your hard work this afternoon chopping back the Buddleia bushes, cutting back old flowering stems in the herb garden, sweeping up leaves and harvesting the last of the leeks and beetroot.
This year’s RSPB Big School’s Birdwatch was carried during January and February. We have taken part in this national survey for the last nine years. Each class completed one survey with all children having the opportunity to take part. The surveys lasted one hour during which time we counted the maximum number of each species seen together (i.e. not individual visits).
This year we counted 181 birds over 3 surveys and recorded 19 different species.
Thank you to Peregrine Class for inputting all the data into an Excel spreadsheet and generating a bar chart showing the results.
The number of birds and species was slightly down this year and disappointingly, it was the first year that Tree Sparrows weren’t recorded. However, good numbers of Bullfinch were recorded and we were also treated to fly overs from a Buzzard and a Kestrel.
On September 15th, members of the RSPB visited to work with the children to investigate the wide variety of flora and fauna in the school grounds. Each class worked on a range of activities including bird watching, mini beast hunting and the identification of trees. Older children have since uploaded some of the wildlife photos taken to our ispot account as record of what we saw or for identification purposes. Year 6 children also emptied and recorded moths which were caught in the moth trap set up the night before.
