After our normal introductions, George began the presentation by describing the main features used in bird identification. He used this diagram to explain the different parts of a typical garden or woodland bird.
At the end of this section, the pupils were given a blank bird outline to label themselves and they seemed to enjoy this. The pupils were very good at writing and spelling and finished the task quite quickly.
Next Tony, Martyn and George each took it in turn to describe two birds commonly found in gardens, parks and school grounds. These were: Blackbird, Magpie, Robin, Blue Tit, Goldfinch, Woodpigeon. There was a slide for each bird together with some information about it a recording of their song. At the end of this section the pupils were asked to write down the names of all the birds which had been described from memory. Many of them got all six correct.
By now it was time for the main activity, which was making a Bird Identification dial and using it to answer some quiz questions. The pupils watched a short demonstration and listened carefully to the instructions about how to make the dial. Then, in pairs, they started to make their own.When they had finished, Martyn showed them how to use the Bird ID dial to identify birds. Once that was done the pupils were given some photographs of birds which they had to identify and write their answers on a quiz sheet.
Some of the pupils were so good they got on to a second harder quiz where the photographs only showed some parts of the birds. At the end of this section the pupils marked each other's answers and the results were very good.
Our presentation was finished off with Tony telling the pupils why it is important to feed the birds in the winter time and the sorts of food they eat. He showed them three different types of feeder and explained that they could be bought very cheaply at local stores. The class was then allowed to choose one of the feeders to put in the trees outside their own classroom.
A video of the Great Crested Grebes' courtship 'weed' dance was shown to complete our presentation. Unfortunately we didn't have time today to demonstrate the use of binoculars and a spotting scope, but hopefully we'll come back and do that at a future date.
So ended another successful LOSYBC presentation. The children were all brilliant and we hope to do some further work and perhaps a fieldtrip with them next year.
