Irchester Wildlife Watch

Today we made natural paint. We went for a walk and collected berries and leaves. We collected blackberries, red blackberries, green blackberries, cherry leaves, rosehips, a mixture of yellow flowers, and mixture of purple flowers, crab apples and elderberries. We crushed the berries using a spoon and bowl, the harder things to crush like rosehips and crab apples we used a pestle and motar to crush them. We then strained the berries. We added a little water to the flowers when crushing them up. We then painted pictures using the paint. Some colours were light when we first used them but after we left the paint a while we found the colour darker to use.

Yesterday we made duckling masks. We went on a nature walk collecting suitable items to build nests. When we got back to the nature hut we made nests which would hold a bottle of hot water. Once we had done that we then played a game where each player was a bird, then to get food each time the player had to either choose to have wild food or food from someone who put food out in their garden ( but sometimes forgot to put food out so gave out blank cards as well as food cards). At the end of each season you had to give up some food, and in spring you had to also have food for your chicks too. We then tested which water was the warmest. The better nest had losts of moss in it, so maybe that's a good nest building material.

We made tree frog masks, we played a guess who matching game where we had to match a picture of an animal and match to facts. We went on a wildlife walk and found lots of bones which we think were rabbit bones.

Our topic was fish, chosen by our watch members. We went on a wildlife walk to look at the seasonal ponds to see if there was anything in them, however they were dry due to a lack of rain this winter. We played several games including the eel game which everyone (including leaders) enjoyed.

On our nature walk walk we took a selection of soft birds which had birdsong, we had a robin, blue tit, chaffinch, green woodpecker. While on our walk we set the birdsong off and waited for a reply, we didn't have to wait long and had replies from robins, chaffinch, blue tit, and also a green woodpecker.

Our next meeting is on Saturday 12th March 10am -12 noon all welcome