L.O.S. YBC visits St. Thomas C.E. Primary School

The L.O.S. Young Birders' Club team paid a visit to St. Thomas' C.E. Primary School in Leigh last Wednesday to give some more presentations about birding to young people, with the aim of raising their awareness of the natural world around them.

We worked with two Year 4 classes and, building on the experience gained from our first session, the team offered a modified version of the initial presentation deciding to concentrate on just one practical activity with each class.

George introduced our presentation to the first class and covered such topics as why we need to feed the birds throughout the winter and spring and what sort of birds we are likely to see in our gardens.

There were a lot of questions and feedback from the children - as you can see from the photographs, they were very keen and enthusiastic and clearly interested in the subject.

Tony then demonstrated how to build a bird feeder out of a recycled clear plastic water bottle, some garden wire and a couple of sticks. 

The children worked well in pairs to make the feeders and seemed to really like this activity.  After the bottles were filled with seed they couldn't wait to hang them up and see what birds they attracted.

Finally the children did a word search about bird names to finish off the practical session, before Martyn told them about the L.O.S. Young Birders' Club and the 'Big Garden Birdwatch' event at Pennington Flash on Sunday 27 January.

He also mentioned the competition for designing a new logo for the L.O.S. Young Birders' Club, the details of which are on the website.

After the presentation had been given to the second class, the children worked in pairs to make some bird ID dials. Each person cut out a circular dial and then fastened it to their partner's dial.

When completed, the children used the ID dials to identify some birds from a colour photographs. There was also a slightly harder set of photographs  showing only small parts of birds to ID for those who had finished.

Following a discussion with class teacher Mrs. S. Grant at the end of the session, we also volunteered to accompany the children on a fieldtrip to Lilford Park in Leigh, where they are looking at what impact the proposed guided busway from Leigh to Manchester will have on birds, wildlife and habitat in the area.

This is exactly the sort of project with which the L.O.S. is hoping to get involved in the future.

At the end of each session the class was presented with a metal bird feeder filled with either fat balls or seed for being such a great audience. Our thanks go out to the staff and pupils of St. Thomas' for making us feel so welcome and for working so well on this project - we hope to see you again soon.

Future primary schools lined up for our presentations include Bedford Hall Methodist Primary School in Leigh, St. Richards R.C. Primary School in Atherton and St. Catherine's Catholic Primary School in Lowton.