Nature Club's first evaluation.

 This week my band of nature investigators evaluated the bird feeders from last week.

Our intentions were:

to see if they were still in place and if not to understand why

to see if they had been part of the feeding cycle of a group of animals ( we thought birds, small mammals and insects most likely )

to re-site fallen feeders

Our observations were:

most of the feeders were there

roughly a third were on the ground all with signs of animal feeding

about half were still hanging, not all showed obvious signs of feeding

there were a few strings from the missing feeders evident but none of the lolly stick perches

Our conclusions were:

the feeders on the ground had helped to feed insects (entering around the lolly stick holes and bruises), rodents (there were some definite nibble marks) but we couldn't be sure if any ground feeding birds had made use of them

some of the hanging feeders had peck marks but not many, we didn't think the birds needed them yet

some of the missing ones were probably taken by children tidying the area but others could have been taken to safer feeding spots under cover of vegetation by mammals such as foxes

This is just a brief outline of the really thoughtful discussions that we had in the Eco-area, I'm very pleased with all the children and their interest.

For information I was joined by 19 curious minded pupils!