St. Catherine of Siena Primary School Revisited

We paid our third visit to the St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Primary School in Lowton today. As we'd been twice before and had also visited the Cubs which are based here, many of the pupils are getting to know us now and it was really nice that they greeted us with a smile and tales of what we did last time.

St.Catherine's has the most amazing wildlife area that we've ever seen in a primary school.  It's divided into a number of sections including a sensory garden with scented plants, a small pond with a dipping platform, a large bird screen and many other areas such as weather station area, a geography garden and plenty of shrubs planted over the whole area.

There are also some trees within the area and a small wood bordering one side, giving plenty of cover and perching places for birds.

We started the session by introducing who we are and reminded them of where we're from and why we'd come today.  We won't need to do this any more here because they all know us by name now!

Our fabulous Barn Owl and Kestrel video was then shown and the children we totally absorbed by the different ways they hunt.. Of course the high light of this video is when he Barn Owl swallows the whole mouse it has just caught in one go - we never get tired of seeing this!

The main purpose of today's visit was to do some fieldwork on identifying birds in the wonderful garden and so we began by briefly describing some of the more common birds we were likely to see today.

The pupils were given a worksheet with bird pictures and they had to write down two facts about bird from the information we gave them.  As always they were very enthusiastic about learning about birds and especially what they eat.

Then, armed with our six new pairs of binoculars and bird checklists on clipboards, we divided the class into four groups and set off to explore their mini nature reserve.

The first bird we heard was a Robin singing away from a tree, but in spite of looking for it, we couldn't see it.

However it wasn't long before we did see some Collared Doves flapping away overhead and from that moment on we saw lots more.

The best place today was definitely in the wood that borders the wildlife garden where several Woodpigeons were perched and lots of small birds including Chaffinches and Blue Tits were constantly flying around.

We could also hear the distinctive 'Teacher, Teacher' call of a Great Tit in the wood, which was very appropriate considering we were in a school.  Perhaps it was warning us that the teacher was coming!

Each of the groups visited the different areas in turn often finding something that hadn't been seem before.  But perhaps the best sighting today was that of a pair of Buzzards soaring high over the gardens.  Finally on the way back to the classroom we had a quick look at the school playing fields where we saw some Magpies and Black-headed Gulls, both of which are very common in school grounds.  There were also some Goldfinches flying overhead.

Here's the full list of what the children saw and identified today:

• Robin
• Jackdaw
• Blackbird
• Collared Dove
• Chaffinch
• Great Tit
• Blue Tit
• Woodpigeon
• Magpie
• Goldfinch
• Black-headed Gull
• Herring Gull
• Song Thrush
• Buzzard

What a fabulous resource their wildlife garden is, with so much to see on their doorstep.  There are a variety of habitats here that will attract all sorts of wildlife throughout the seasons. If only all schools had access to something like this, we're sure that more children would be interested in nature and wildlife.

Back in the classroom we still had work to so, so after the coats and wellies had been taken off we set about doing a bird ID quiz from some photographs on a sheet.  The children had to use the knowledge they learnt from today's fieldwork and the facts they'd recorded on their worksheet to name the nine birds on the handout. Most of them found this quite easy now as they are becoming very good a recognising the key features of common birds.

The class then went on to a harder bird ID quiz using the posters kindly provided by the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds).

The children were give written descriptions of nine birds and had to match them to the photographs and text on the wallchart and so identify each bird.

They worked in pairs and soon the whole classroom was buzzing with very thoughtful discussions about which bird it could or couldn't be in the photograph.

We finished off the session by going through all the answers and found out that the children had done really well.  So it seems they can easily remember what they've learned today and in past visits and can  put their knowledge to good use. This is very encouraging to the Young Birders' Club Team and it's what makes our visits to schools and youth groups so rewarding.

We hope to see you all again soon, and who knows, perhaps we'll even be able to take you around Pennington Flash sometime soon to see a wider variety of birds than you can see in school or in your garden.

Hopefully another Young Ornithologist in the making!