The Blog @ Shropshire Wildlife Trust

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.