Shropshire Wildlife Trust

We are celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th Birthday in 2009 with a project all about some creatures we know he was very fond of- worms!

Back in October 2008, Shropshire Wildlife Trust was awarded funds from the Darwin Community Arts Fund, allowing us to put together an exciting new project for nursery schools.

We feel that earthworms have a lot to teach us about recycling and living in a more gentle and environmentally-friendly way.

By encouraging very young children to take part in worm composting or “vermicomposting”, we are creating a positive message about caring for our world and caring for our future.

Thirty nursery schools across Shrewsbury have so far been contacted, with an offer of a free wormery and support from Shrewsbury’s Master Composters.

The response has been brilliant! Twenty-six nursery schools have already received their wormery and over 700 children are now hard at work looking after their new wriggling friends. Please come back to visit these pages for more updates and information on Charles Darwin, vermicomposting and wriggly worms.

The last session!!!!

With lots of shouts of urrgggghhh! we dissected barn owl pellets.

When owls catch voles and mice they really enjoy eating the meat but they cannot digest the bones so they save them up, create a sort of ‘furball’ full of bones and spit it out - that’s what an owl pellet is!

When you start looking closely into these pellets you find an amazing selection of bones - some skulls, leg bones, pelvic bones, teeth and claws!

We could identify several vole skulls, some mice and even a rat (we think!).

We’ve finished now for the summer so a huge thank you goes to all those involved in the Minsterley Eco Club.

Have a great summer!

We’ve encouraged birds and bugs so this week it was the turn of bats!

It was a noisy session with lots of banging but we eventually produced two wonderful bat boxes.

We decided to position them in the school grounds so one of them faces south and the other faces north, to encourage bats to use them all year round.

Bat boxes are easy to make but once they are in place you should not open them. To inspect a bat box you need a special licence so if you suspect a bat is using them contact your local wildlife trust. You can still watch to see if any come out at dusk though!!

Go out and find some worms!!!!

This week we made wormaries however the worms were in short supply! It had been very dry and the ground was baked hard.

Anyone know any good worm charming techniques?

Did you know there is an annual worm charming contest in Cheshire? Fancy entering?

We also worked hard weeding our new flower beds and watering the plants.

The challenge for this week was to identify a few of the wild flowers and grasses collected in the meadow last week.

It was interesting to see most of the grasses were green whereas the flowers were brightly coloured - a sign that grasses are pollinated by wind but flowers have to attract insects for pollination.

We used the dried specimens to create colour collages as a visual reminder of the local meadow. Hope the cows enjoy it as much as we did!

The selection was huge - more than ten different types of grass and flowers such as red and white clover, dandelion, sheep sorrel, bugle and even an orchid!

Who can guess how the dandelion got its name?

The ecoclub goes on tour!!

What a fantastic session. We were invited by a local farmer to see a wild flower meadow before it was grazed by cattle.

Armed with sweep nets and pots we headed off to see the meadow. It was a sea of colour and swaying stems. We collected samples of as many different grasses and wild flowers as we could.

A damselfly was spotted, along with a bumblebee and a fox hole with three cubs peering out of it!

The Do One Thing task for the summer term was to ‘give a bug a home’. Excellent as we’d already planned to make an insect hotel! Wooden pallets, old plant pots, straw and twigs were collected and arranged to create a tower of places perfect for insects such ladybirds and lacewings.

Week 7 was the last week for some of the group so we held a celebratory bug hunt to try and find out how many minibeasts we had attracted to the school grounds. We had great fun looking under the logs in the log pile, shaking trees and peering at the ground.

Woodlice, worms, ants, beetles, butterflies and a frog were uncovered during our search.

The ‘Do One Thing’ for this term was to ‘Make a Garden Grow’.

The school was sent an information pack by BBC Breathing Places Schools which contained some free seeds.

These seeds were Sunflower, Pot Marigold, Corn Poppy, Cornflower and Borage.

The children decided to create a wild flower bed and so got digging - again! The ground was prepared and the seeds sown but only inbetween discovering ants eggs, tasting wild garlic and finding fungus!

Hedgerows make excellent habitats for wildlife, animals nest in them , others feed from them and some use them to navigate.

Although it is a little late in the season to be planting a hedgerow the children in the Eco club were committed to providing the shrubs the necessary care such as regular watering.

Hawthorn, hazel and field maple were among the species planted and watered in. This involved digging a trench, finding the root collar and firming the saplings in.

Of course we discovered lots of worms and even a pill millipede whilst we were digging!

April is the month to stop any large scale changes to your wildlife area, such as pond creation or clearance; hold off any tree planting until Autumn, and certainly delay any removal of trees for a while, as Spring really gets underway. Take the class out and look for the first dates of Hawthorn blossom (it’s beautiful and smells very sweet). Traditionally called “May” (due to it’s flowering time), it gives rise to the traditional saying of “Cast not a clout ’til May is out”. It doesn’t mean “don’t hit anyone until June!” as someone once told me; rather “don’t take off any of your winter clothes until the May blossom appears”.

Hawthorn blossom usually heralds the onset of summer, the end of frosts and cold winds. Unfortunately, in these days of changeable climate, May blossom is appearing earlier and earlier- click here to see this year’s records on the nature’s calender website. The first May blossom spotted was on the 21st March! Are we going to have to change the name of this attractive flower?

Towards the end of April, look out for the first dragonflies of the year. The Common Blue and Large Red Damselflies are the first to appear, followed swiftly by larger species such as the Broad-Bodied Chaser. Take part in a national dragonfly survey with the British Dragonfly Society by clicking here.

Our summer migrants are due to appear - look to the skies for returning swifts, sand martins and swallows and listen out for chiff chaffs. All these birds have flown incredible distances from southern Europe and Africa. They’ll be with us now until September, when their breeding season ends and they head south once more.

There’s less to do now that Spring is well underway, just keep on top of little jobs like path clearance, maintain Forest School basecamps and vegetable gardens, but above all, get outside and explore.