Just before the October holiday we took part in this activity as a joint Eco-Schools and Science project.
The campaign is promoted by
Jointhepod.org working with
The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).
Research by the BTO has shown declining numbers of many kinds of birds, which may be caused in part by a decline in the amount of food available. In particular, the BTO want to know about numbers of soil invertebrates which many birds feed on.
By recruiting schools across the country to take part in the project, they hope to collect a mass of data to analyse. Groups of children from all KS1 & KS2 year groups dug up 30cm squares of turf from the school field, the area by the school garden, and the green space next to school. They counted the number and size of worms and any other creatures that they discovered.
The process will be repeated in March and again in June to give a comparison across the seasons.