Well done to Jack, Emily and family for their positive efforts to counter dog fouling in the local area. What great, positive and helpful thing to do!
Let us know if anyone else is taking part in any fab community action!
Smaller than blackbirds, with a short tail, pointed head, triangular wings, starlings look black at a distance but when seen closer they are very glossy with a sheen of purples and greens.
Their flight is fast and direct and they walk and run confidently on the ground. Noisy and gregarious, starlings spend a lot of the year in flocks.
Still one of the commonest of garden birds, its decline elsewhere makes it a Red List species.
In the winter months, at dusk, Starlings gather together in huge clouds over their roosts and swirl around in what we call “murmurations”. This is an incredible spectacle and you can see them at this time of year at Fairburn Ings on the edge of Leeds.
RS have been very busy making a faboulous den using different sized and shaped branches. The children watched the tree surgeons prune the trees at the orchard and decided they wanted to recycle the branches by making a den. Our great gardener Jack saved the branches and once the tree surgeons had finished, RS got to work on building their den. They worked as a team deciding where the branches would go, how they would build it and what it would look like. When they had finished they were very proud of their work.
Well done RS.
The males live up to their name but, confusingly, females are brown often with spots and streaks on their breasts. The bright orange-yellow beak and eye-ring make adult male blackbirds one of the most striking garden birds. One of the most common UK birds, its mellow song is also a favourite.
Earthworms are a favourite food for blackbirds. They are able to hear movement just beneath the ground’s surface and hunt by cocking their head, listening carefully. They also eat other insects, caterpillars, fallen fruit and berries, foraging on the ground and in the undergrowth. You can often hear blackbirds in hedges and undergrowth flipping fallen leaves as they search for food beneath.
The largest UK tit – green and yellow with a striking glossy black head with white cheeks and a black stripe down it’s yellow front. It is a woodland bird which has readily adapted to man-made habitats to become a familiar garden visitor. It can be quite aggressive at a birdtable, fighting off smaller tits. In winter it joins with blue tits and others to form roaming flocks which scour gardens and countryside for food.
The Great Tit has a wide range of songs and calls but it is best recognised by it’s two note song that sounds like it is calling “Tea-cher, Tea-cher”
With its noisy chattering, black-and-white plumage and long tail, there is nothing else quite like the magpie in the UK. When seen close-up its black plumage takes on an altogether more colourful hue with a purplish-blue iridescent sheen to the wing feathers and a green gloss to the tail.
Here you can hear a Magpie chattering with a scared Blackbird in the background making it’s alarm call.
Magpies seem to be jacks of all trades – scavengers, predators and pest-destroyers, their challenging, almost arrogant attitude has won them few friends.
You can see lots of Magpies around Leeds. They make a lot of noise and are omnivores and scavengers.
There are lots of superstitions about magpies – see if you can find out more.
“One for sorrow,
Well-known rhyme about Magpies
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret
never to be told”
The UK’s favourite bird – with its bright red breast it is familiar throughout the year and especially at Christmas! Males and females look identical, and young birds have no red breast and are spotted with golden brown. Robins sing nearly all year round and despite their cute appearance, they are aggressively territorial and are quick to drive away intruders. They will sing at night next to street lights – listen to this recording to learn what a robin sounds like.
You will probably find this one of the easiest birds to identify and one of the birds you can get closest to, some people can get Robins to eat out of their hands!
This week’s whole school challenge is to go out on a winter hunt in your local area. How many of the items on the sheet can you find? How adventurous can you be at extending your learning?
Have a go at these challenges from your phase Forest School leader:
Miss Brahman’s challenge for Nursery and Reception: As you walk around doing your winter hunt, can you use your senses to talk about what you see, smell, hear and feel. Can you tell me what your favourite winter discovery is and why?
Mrs Colea’s challenge for KS1: Could you draw a map of your walk and plot the location your discoveries? Maybe write or make a video of you telling a short story about your journey or the animals who live in the area.
Miss Slater’s challenge for KS2: How creatively can you share your findings? Pic collage, poem, story, vlog or something else?
The printable resource and lots of other lovely outdoor leaning activities can be found here:
http://www.treetoolsforschools.org.uk/activities/pdfs/pdf_winter_spotter_sheet.pdf
Please send your creations, photos or videos to the Forest school teachers for us to share on the blog at forestschool@allertonceprimary.com.
When I was a small boy (a long, long, long time ago in the last century!) I was a “Young Ornithologist” – that is, someone who watches and studies birds.Bird watching is still one of my favourite pasttimes.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) run a Big Garden Birdwatch every year where they encourage people to identify and count the birds in their garden for an hour sometime on the last weekend of January.
This is a great opportunity to learn a bit about the birds that live around you, they are AMAZING! Why not take part?
The RSPB website has some great suggestions to help you attract birds to your garden or window sill and how to identify them. Here are some of the things you can do:
Do share with us what you find out and we will publish some of your pictures and findings on this blog.
You may see Red Kites flying over your garden but you would be very lucky to have one land in your garden!
Here is a useful leaflet to help you with the more common birds you might see in your garden.
In December the children used sticks to create Christmas decorations. This task required great concentration and resilience, as tying the sticks together was very tricky! I observed some excellent team work during this activity.
In our final week before the holidays the children completed a ‘Follow the Star’ activity which was inspired by the story of Baby Jesus.
The children worked as a group to search for stars hung around the school grounds. Each star had an activity to complete before they could move onto the next one.
The children took turns to read the instructions, which included a combination of movement, mathematics and team building activities. The children loved this session!
During the colder months we take lots of movement breaks to warm up our bodies outdoors. Our favourite games are ‘What Time is it Mr Wolf?’ and ‘Pip, Squeek, Wilfred’.
We also sing lots of songs using the percussion instruments to create sounds of the winter weather such as rain, wind and thunder.