Recording local wildlife

 

I came across an event run by Greater Manchester Record Centre called small mammal trapping and thought it would be interesting for us all to see what was going on so I duly booked us a place this last weekend. We went along Friday evening to meet up with the Salford Rangers, Stephen who is employed by the Greater Manchester record Centre and Tony who brought the traps from Liverpool museum. We met at the Garden Needs plant centre and headed into Kersal Dale where Tony explained about the 3 different kinds of traps he had brought.

 

He had 39 traps which we filled with straw for bedding and some food - cat food and seeds - before placing in various places around the area. The idea I think was that each traps position was logged with its GPS coordinate, but everyone was a bit excited and went off placing their traps, so the chap with the GPS didn't manage to get round and log them all. This proved to be a problem the following day when we were trying to locate them all again and people couldn't remember where they had put them (and one lady couldn't make it the following day either!)

Kersal Dale was a lovely spot we hadn't visited before. It was predominantly a beech wood but we saw a sweet chestnut which was dropping loads of fruit. We did a little research about them on the Friday evening and went back armed with strong gloves and a thick bag to collect them in.

Saturday dawned and it was an early start for us all to get out of the house! We were last to arrive but got there just in time to see the first mammal that had been caught - a wood mouse.

The boys traps were down by the River Irwell - 2 out of 3 had been tripped but only one had something in - another mouse

 It was difficult to tell when you picked them up if there was an animal in as these mice only weigh up to a max of about 30g.

Mature wood mouse

Young wood mouse

An hour later we had found 37 of the traps and 11 wood mice - male and female had been logged.

More searching for a while with pleasant conversation with like minded people about bird song, kingfisher sightings and fungi foraging and only one more trap found the other being declared lost!

We headed back to the garden centre where Tony gave an interesting presentation on small mammals that may be seen locally - unfortunately we had to leave before it had finished due to a prior commitment, but not before we had made arrangements to borrow some traps from the record centre to see what small mammals are down in our local valley. The boys were really keen to pursue this - Luke has been researching how to make a trap - so shall look forward to the next instalment!

Chillies and nature journals

Over the last week we have been watching John Muir on you tube talking about keeping a nature journal. Its quite long so we watched a little section each day as I wanted the boys to learn from someone who is passionate about what they do.

When we had finished watching I asked them if there was anything they would like to study and they decided to observe our chilli plant that has been growing in the green house but had been brought inside to harvest.

The chillies were grown from some seeds we had saved from chillies we had bought last year from the supermarket.

We found that Capsaicinoids are the chemical which give rise to the heat of chillies. The "hotness" of a chilli is measured by the scoville scale which was originally a subjective measurement but is now measured scientifically by using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to see how much capsaicinoid is present. It is named after its developer Wilbur Scoville.

 The hottest chillies - the Haberno and Scotch Bonnet have pungencies of 300 000+ with the hottest recorded one being 577 000 compared to pure capsaicin being 16 000 000.

I was so pleased with their attitude to completing a page in their nature journals and although we didn't all manage to sit down together to complete them (which is my dream - maybe one day!) I was very impressed with their pages and they had incorporated some of the ideas given in the video -

•  asking questions,
•  not worrying about the quality of your sketches, 
• adding details of scale,
• zooming in on small parts of what you were studying.

Lukes' nature journal

Bens' nature journal

Our chillies have been harvested this week and I have tried various recipes:

• lazy chillies (chopped and preserved in vinegar and kept in the fridge)

• hot pepper jelly (chilli and bell peppers in a jelly)

Hope they taste good!

Wildflowers in the park

We have recently discovered a new park (new to us) a few weeks ago and when my husband ended up working all night last week I took the children out for the morning to give him some peace to sleep!

The park is right next to a small library so they sat there to do their maths (a bit too chilly now to sit out!) and then we headed outside to explore the wild-flower meadow.

I was amazed how many different flowers there were when we looked closely

Cornflower

Poppy

?Scentless mayweed

?Fleabane

Corncockle

Common knapweed

If anyone can help with identifying the white and yellow flowers that would be great ; )

We also investigated the different sounds made by snapping the dried stems of some plants we found at the edge of the meadow.

There's some lovely wood art in the park

and stone work

We found lots of signs of Autumn

Beech nuts

Elderberries

We then did our exercise at the green gym!

We'll definitely be back for another visit - beautiful.