A successful start to the L.O.S. Young Birders' Club Campaign

George's introduction
On Friday 12 January, Tony Bishop, George Pike and Martyn Jones began the L.O.S. Young Birders' Club campaign at Gilded Hollins Community Primary School in Leigh. 

Our first presentation was to a Year 4 class of pupils all aged between 8 and 9 years old and the main focus of the session was to tell the pupils about our Society, what we do and how we can all help birds and wildlife in general.

Tony loses his bottle
The presentation was introduced by George with Martyn operating a PowerPoint slideshow and this led into a demonstration by Tony of how to make a simple bird feeder out of a recycled plastic bottle (full details of which are here).

Then it was the pupils turn to make the feeders - the class was divided into five groups of six pupils who each had a tray with all the materials to make one birder feeder between two children.

Fortunately the children listened very carefully and there was only one slight accident with the seed!

Here are some photos of the construction process:
Inserting the perches
Filling the feeder
The finished product
Unfortunately we didn't have time to make the Bird ID Dials as planned with the Year 4 class, and so we left them with the materials and quiz to do so at a later time.  The class teacher seemed very keen to do this and carry on the work we had started.

The first session was finished with Martyn giving a short presentation about the LOS Young Birders' Club which is planning to give a guided tour around the bird hides at Pennington Flash at the Big Garden Birdwatch event being held there on Sunday 27 January, more details about which will follow in a later post.  

Martyn also showed the pupils the new LOS Young Birders' Club Website where they can add their own bird sightings, as well as send in photographs, artwork and nature reports by email for publication on the web.

In the next session we gave a revised version of the presentation to a Year 5 class of pupils aged 9 and 10.

This time we had a little longer to deliver the materials and so after George had done the introduction, Tony showed the class how to make the Bird ID Dial.

The pupils paired up and had no difficulty in cutting out the dials and assembling them with the fastener. To the left is a photo of the finished product.



Tony then demonstrated how to make the bird feeder and again the pupils were very enthusiastic and skilled in making their feeders. Here are some of the results:


At the end of the session the Society donated a metal bird feeder with fat balls for the Year 4 class and a metal and plastic seed feeder to the Year 5 class as a thank-you for their hard work during the sessions. We were made to feel very welcome by all the staff and pupils at Gilded Hollins and they seemed to enjoy the activities as much as we did.  On our way out we noticed that some of the feeders had already been hung up in the trees outside the Year 4 classroom.



Hopefully we will manage to visit a lot more schools and organisations in the area to encourage bird and nature watching and conservation. Our next presentation will be given to St. Thomas' Primary School in Leigh on Wednesday 23 January, and we are hoping to visit Bedford Hall Methodist Primary School next month.

If anyone reading this has any contacts with primary schools in the Wigan and Leigh area we'd like to hear from you so that we might arrange to give them our presentation and encourage membership of L.O.S. Young Birders' Club events.
Martyn Jones