Wildlife

We visited a local musuem today as it has an excellent Roman exhibition which the children wanted to see again following our recent visit to Hadrian's Wall.  Whilst we were there we just had to explore the rest of the museum and we found a wonderful temporary exhibition about a local estuary.  It is not somewhere we have visited before as it is a long drive from where we live, but this wonderful exhibition left us all wanting to pay the area a visit.  There were lots of examples of the wildlife that you find on the estuary which the children spend ages exploring.  We also picked up a booklet that we had seen mentioned on the Springwatch programmes that we watched earlier this year.  It has been produced by the BBC as part of their Summer of Wildlife project to get people reconnecting with nature you can download a copy here.

We are not really the target for this project as we already spend a considerable amount of time outdoors but I had a look at the booklet to see what it was all about.  It gives advice on how to get started and what equipment you might need.  There are twelve challenges for you to try which range from spotting nature as you walk to the shops, to going pond dipping, to building hedgehog houses, to taking part in nature surveys.  Most of the challenges are things that we are already doing but there were a few new ideas such as watching wildlife at dusk, we might need to do that when we are camping as if we were to sit outside for any length of time at home we would get eaten alive by midges!  The back of the booklet is a section that you can tear off and put on the wall to tick off the challenges as you complete them.  The children were both really excited about the booklet and challenges so we bought one home to complete.

If you are not confident to complete any or many of the challenges suggested there is a series of events run by the BBC and partners, all in the UK, which you could go to instead or as well.  We don't really need an excuse to get outside but now we have more reasons to spend the summer outdoors and for the really wet days and or evenings there is also a list of programmes that the BBC is showing over the next few months.

Something for everyone!

Linking up with Fridays Nature Table over at Magic Onions.