The Big Schools Birdwatch

Free Resources
Children (and adults!) love “spotting” things. I think the game I Spy is written into everyone’s genetic code. What better activity to get them off their devices and outside than the RSPB’s Big Schools Birdwatch, which runs from now until 19th February. This is the link:
https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/get-ready-for-big-schools-birdwatch 
Whatever age group you are teaching, from Early Years to Secondary, free resources are available to help you and your class take part, including differentiated material to support the survey and data analysis. All the resources support curriculum learning and are available bilingually for schools in Wales. RSPB have also got loads of other stuff in their resource library that can help you point your children to the natural world, so check out their website – https://www.rspb.org.uk/

Waxwing Winter
When I’m not sitting at a computer I love to go to wild places with my camera photographing birds. These are waxwings: they aren’t common birds, but occasionally we have what birders call a “waxwing Winter”- this year is one, in fact – when flocks of them, from a handful to hundreds of birds, fly South from their breeding grounds to the warmer climes of the UK and descend on trees that bear berries to devour their fruit. If you see them, it will quite possibly be in a retail park car park or a tree lined avenue on a housing estate. These were two of 18 on a roadside tree in Stoke-on-Trent. Not so wild, then…

A competition
Once I get onto birds I’m capable of going on at considerable length, so I won’t do that. But do check out the Big Schools Birdwatch, and you may also want to point your children to the Big Garden Birdwatch which is also going on now. And finishing on waxwings – there are more of them in the North and East of the country than elsewhere, although that doesn’t mean you won’t find them in the South or West. As well as spotting things, children love a competition. How about “Who can be first to spot a waxwing?” Not many will, because they occur very locally, depending on where the berry-marauding flocks have found a food supply, but it will get them out with their eyes open – especially in tree-lined retail parks. And the great thing about all of this is that you don’t have to be any good at school work, or sports, to succeed. If any of your children spot one, let us know!