Last week I worked with a school to help them set up some wildlife cameras in their schools grounds. Today, I returned and worked with a group of children to make a mammal box as well! The group of children ranged from Year 3 to Year 6 and they were all members of the eco-council. I had pre-made a simple box and the caretaker had kindly pre-drilled all the holes in the week since I was there, so the kids were all able to have a go with the hand drill to screw the screws in to create the box and to mount the camera inside. We checked the image we were getting on my laptop. The kids loved sticking their finger through the hole and seeing it on the laptop screen!
I taught them all about wood mice and voles and how they can tell the difference and we looked at some of my footage from clay cavern.
We then took our little box down to an area in front of the school that has lots of ivy. We set the box up against the wall and filled it with seed…. now to wait for the first visitors. The kids were excited about what we might get and have set up a basic live stream of the cameras. It can be seen by viewing the link on their website at www.mdjs.co.uk
I have popping in and out to see if I can spy a wood mouse, but it will take a little while I expect. They have had lots of visitors on their bird feeders during the day though!
I am hoping to do a lot more work with this school in the coming months, so keep an eye out for our next challenge!
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