GUEST BLOGGER: Melanie Beck, Assistant Leader of the Norwich Nuthatches (the RSPB's local Wildlife Explorers club for children)
For February’s Norwich Nuthatches meeting we were going to turn detective. You can’t always see the wildlife around you but if you know what to look for there are clues that show it is there. We began with a little test to see if we could match the footprints to the animals and birds. It was made harder because the prints were not always the right size. But it turned out that the Nuthatches knew their badger prints from their otter prints and coot prints from their grey heron prints!
Next we tried an experiment. We were going to find some animal prints and make our own casts. Sadly our experiment didn’t work. Many of the tracks had been washed away by overnight rain so we had to try and make our own. Then we made our mixture too thick and it had set before we could get it into our moulds! Never mind – this would be one experiment we would have to try again!
It was then time to look for clues to show that animals were around us even if we couldn’t see them. We had already talked about footprints but there are other clues too. As we walked through the woods we found pine cones and nuts that had been nibbled. We also found scratched wood, feathers, droppings, coot and deer prints in the mud and the skull of a mammal. We also found a piece of rotten wood with a hole in the top made by a great spotted woodpecker. When we turned it over we could see just how deep the parent bird had had to peck away at the wood to make it deep enough for her nest to keep the chicks safe.
Our final piece of detective work was to dissect some owl pellets to see what barn owls had had for their tea. Once an owl has eaten its tea there are bits that they can’t digest. The fur, feather and bones are formed into a pellet and to get rid of them they are coughed up. Very carefully we pulled the fur and feathers away from the pellet and began to find lots of small bones. We were able to find that the bones were from voles, shrews and even a small bird. There were all sorts of bones: jaws, shoulder blades, hips, ribs, parts of the spine and a bird skull. Many of the pellets had the bones of more than one creature. If you had the patience you could even do your own jigsaw to make a skeleton!
The Norwich Nuthatches made very good detectives. Next time you are on a walk in the countryside take a few minutes to look a little more closely around you. Who knows what clues you might find to the wildlife that might be watching you!
Written by Norwich Nuthatches Assistant Leader, Melanie Beck.