WOW Club Feeding Station gets a makeover!

Another busy meeting at WOW! Club as we all worked on re-designing our feeding station that is on our live camera. We wanted to spread the feeders out a bit... and add some more as well.

First we took a milk carton and we used it to make a funnel feeder filler for out seed and peanut. We simply cut a section out of the milk carton and then created a funnel. We then tested out straight away... and it worked brilliantly!

We banged a post into the ground and then took a long piece of wood. We screwed some cup hooks in it, to hang a selection of feeders.....

We then fixed all our bird feeders along the piece of wood....

We moved the camera so it looks along all the feeders. We also have a good view of the bird feeders from school so we can have regular bird watches!

Can you see the log feeder??? One of our pupils made some of these with his grandad and brought them into school.... brill aren't they!!

We were all very proud of our new feeding station and we hope the birds really like it too!

It was getting dark, so we came into school. We started doing some information cards to go near the feeding station. We talked about which birds might come and then we each chose one species. We started to work on the computers .... our info cards were soon looking GREAT!!!

Thank you Ark Wildlife!

Wildlife Club were very excited this week to receive some goodies from Ark Wildlife! Ark had kindly sent Ms MacRae some kit from their warehouse clear-out! We were delighted to have two new hedgehog houses for our wildlife area and a frog house too!


Ark Wildlife have a website where you can buy loads of wildlife goodies... so take a look if you have a chance!

Here we are with these three homes for wildlife in our Wildlife Area....

 We talked about each wildlife home and where we should put them. We are probably a bit late for hibernating hedgehogs now, but we filled them with some hay and leaves... just in case! We chose two places to put them. We placed the first one under a bush, next to the wall.....

We covered it with some leaves and foliage.
We placed the second one up near our log pile, by an old fence....

We decided to place this little ceramic frog and toad home up near our pond. We made a little hollow in the long grass near the pond and nestled it in there. We hope some frogs move in because Ms MacRae was surprised to find out that some of us had never seen a frog close up!!

We want the other pupils to know about these homes and that they must not be disturbed so, as it was getting dark, we came inside and made some signs to go next to the homes. We said what they were and asked pupils not to disturb them. Ms MacRae laminated them and we stapled them onto sticks that we could press into the ground next to each house!

 A good evening's work in WOW Club!! Thank you again to Ark Wildlife for donating these items to school.

WOW! Club Hedgehog House

This week in WOW! Club, we made a place for hedgehogs to hibernate. We used materials that we had around school, so it would cost us absolutely nothing! We knew that hedgehogs often hibernate in compost heaps or piles of leaves, so we tried to recreate a 'posh' version of that!
We started with a waterproof collapsable bin that we had in school. This would form the main part of our hedgehog house.

We chose a corner of our garden, under a tree and out of the way.

We smoothed the earth underneath and put a layer of leaves down. We then used lots of canes and twigs to build up a teepee type affect around the bin to hold it in place and to protect it and stop it collapsing. Gradually we built a 'cage' structure over the top, leaving a part at the front for an entrance. We took debris off our compost heap, such as bamboo leaves and wove them around the twigs. We packed all the spaces with dried leaves to insulate it all.

Taking some bricks and some old log roll, we then built a little entrance hole to our hedgehog house. We tipped two big containers full of leaves on top of our house and patted then down.

Finally, we added some hay and some leaves inside.

We were very pleased with the finished product... we just hope the hedgehogs like it as much as we do!

Ms MacRae shares her seed prize with WOW! Club

Buying food for our birds at school can cost a lot of money....  but this week Ms MacRae bought in two big bags of seed for the birds at school.

Ms MacRae had won 'Best Bird Garden' which is sponsored by a bird food company called 'Just for Birds'. She had an article all about her garden in 'Bird Watching' magazine, Summer Special. Her prize was 4 big sacks of food. As we have lots of hungry bird mouths to feed over the coming winter, Ms MacRae donated half of her prize to school!

Here we are with the two sacks she brought in... this should keep us (and the birds!) going for a while!

If you would like to help out WOW! club by donating any feed, feeders or anything to help us in our wildlife club, then please contact Ms MacRae at wildlifekate@live.co.uk.

We make our Bird Table!

With screw driver and electric drill in hand, Wildlife Club were keen to see if they could make our new bird table this week. We opened the box and spread all the parts out. We looked carefully at the instructions and split the task between all of us so everyone would get a go at using the drill and playing a part in the bird table's construction.

Everyone worked really well as a team to create all the different parts of the bird table.....

Within about 40 minutes, we had managed to complete it. This table is a bit smaller than our main one and we are positioning it close to the hedge to try and attract birds that might be a bit too nervous to come right up close to school. We were all pretty proud of ourselves for managing to build it!

We will now keep an eye out and see what starts visiting.

We also added a new feeder to the live stream camera.... this is a bird 'cookie'... suet in the middle and seed all around the edge. We are sure the birds are going to LOVE it!

Our First Meeting: Setting up the Bird Feeding Station

I was greeted tonight by lots of keen, eager WOW Club members, all ready to get stuck in on the first Wildlife project of the new term.... getting our bird feeding station up and running. The club members will then be responsible for keeping all the feeders topped up. I will also be teaching them how to recognise all the birds that visit, so they can then hold birdwatching sessions for other children in the school and help them to learn about the feathered visitors we get to our school grounds.

The club members were greeted by a table full of 'goodies' when they came after school..... a big pile of dead sunflowers from the school garden, some bird feeders and food and a flat pack bird table which we bought out of our Tesco vouchers!

Our first job of the day was to harvest all the sunflower seeds so we could use them in one of our bird feeders..... most of the group had not appreciated that sunflower seeds actually come from a sunflower! We talked about how they are formed and looked at the large number that were produced in some of the heads we had. Sadly, these had fallen over and got a bit damp, but we did our best to get all the seeds out. We also discovered some other wildlife... lots of earwigs that like living inside the sunflower heads, plus a few spiders, beetles and a ladybird!

Next, we took a look at the different types of bird feeders we had and the different food types. We learnt about how a wide variety of foods and feeders will attract lots of different birds. I bought some spare feeders in from home to use in school and we hope to get some more types soon... a niger one for the goldfinches perhaps!

As it had stopped raining, we took the feeders outside to fill them all up.... we had already made enough mess in school with bits of sunflower seeds!!!

It was not long before they were all ready to be hung up! Everyone was really pleased and excited about what they are going to attract to our garden!

All that was left was to get the camera and the live stream set up again. We moved the feeders around and checked on the computer, that they looked good. We could see the set up on the live stream on our website. It is great to have the live stream as it means that we can all watch the bird feeders when we are at home and we can share our feeders with lots of other people too! You will be able to see our ive stream camera on our school website and on the WOW Club member page on my WildlifeKate 'My Patch' page.

We finished tonight's meeting by taking a look at  my WildlifeKate website and taking a look at what was visiting my feeders. The kids were excited to see a blue tit and a greenfinch.

Time had flown past and we had not had time to make our new bird table... that will have to wait until next week. A great start to WOW! Club and I am sure when I return to school next Monday, there will be lots of excited children waiting to tell me what has been visiting our feeders.