The sun shone for both days and great fun was had by all!
50 pupils from Bishop Sutton Primary School walked from their school to the site at Bristol Water's Picnic Site No. 2 on Friday 1st July and were encouraged to hunt for as many different species of wildlife as possible by a range of enthusiastic naturalists and specialists. They all visited the Bernard King Hide to look for birds, joined botanist Liz Biron to look for wildflowers, tree specialist Rich Causton spotting trees, Pete the Bug Man (alias Pete Dawson) to hunt for those flying, creeping, crawling mini beasts and mammal expert Gill Brown examining animal skulls and seeking out tracks and prints of deer, badgers, foxes and stoats around the site.
While the children enjoyed a picnic lunch, they were entertained by Bristol based theatre company Desperate Men (www.desperatemen.com) who performed their internationally acclaimed show - 'Darwin and the Dodo'. After lunch it was back to some serious searching for even more species. At the end of the day almost 100 separate species had been identified!
The Friday evening Bat Walk led by Craig Stenson of Avon Wildlife Trust Consultancy resulted in the recording of a very rare bat - Nathusius's pipistrelle and the Dawn Bird Walk, led by Mark Turnbull of Lakeside Optics was blessed with sightings (or should that be 'hearings') of Cetti's and Reed warblers, the rapid, swooping fly- by of a Sparrowhawk and the quick flash of a kingfisher.
As the sun rose, Saturday turned out to be a classic summer's day and there was a concentrated effort by naturalists and public alike scouring the site for all manner of wildlife from mosses to moths to mammals. ID books and microscopes on loan from UWE enabled identification of the more difficult, smaller species.
At the end of the day's work there were recorded 550 different species - some of them never recorded locally before - which goes to show just how full of wildlife our local environment is.
And there are still records of invertebrates to come in.
We really want to very sincerely and gratefully say THANK YOU VERY MUCH ......
To the naturalists, volunteers, recorders, AWT staff, cooks, sandwich makers, teachers, performers, Bristol Water, the folks at U.W.E. and anyone else who was involved..........
Click here for full species list .
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