Monday 25 September 2017

Elderberry Syrup



With beautiful berries dripping from the trees and hedgerows here at Wicor we decided to put some to good use. Our apothecary garden has recently been revitalised and we are enjoying getting to know what the medicinal properties are of the new plants in there.





Coughs, colds and sore throats are a common complaint coming into the autumn months and we guess a remedy to help with any of these would be a winner. One plant we all know in our apothecary garden is ginger, so this gave us a perfect ingredient to mix with our elderberries and some spices to create a smooth and soothing elderberry syrup.



If you want to fill your room with a rich mulled aroma and try a natural cure for coughs and sneezes then try our natural remedy, take a look at our recipe below.


Elderberry Syrup                                 

Ingredients
400g fresh elderberries
2 cinnamon sticks
3 star anise
2cm piece of fresh ginger
10 cardamom pods
5 whole cloves
1 teaspoon dried orange peel
Caster sugar

Method


  1.        Place the elderberries, spices and sugar into a large saucepan and pour over 500ml of cold water.
  2.       Bring to the boil and then simmer, uncovered for around 20minutes. Stirring occasionally the liquid will reduce slightly.
  3.       Remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool.
  4.       Strain the liquid from the pan through a piece of muslin cloth into a jug. Press down on the berries with the back of a wooden spoon. Measure how much liquid you have strained.
  5.          Pour this into the pan and add equal quantities of sugar as you have liquid into the pan, grams to millilitres.
  6.       Slowly dissolve the sugar stirring with a wooden spoon and bring to the boil.
  7.       Simmer for around 10 – 15 minutes until the liquid has reduced and is thicker.
  8.       Pour the hot syrupy liquid into hot sterilised bottles, seal, label and date.

Year 6



Friday 2 June 2017

Elder grove



Just over a year ago, on one of our winter grounds days, we planted some more native trees and over 100 whips and saplings went into the ground.  These ranged from blackthorns to apple ‘step-overs’ and hazelnuts to gingko.   Within our pond area stands a magnificent elder tree (Sambucus nigra) from which we make our own elderflower cordial in the spring (it is heavy with flower at the moment) and then pop the elderberries into jams with our blackberries or raspberries later in the year.   Our children love foraging in this way and so we decided to plant an elder grove at the bottom of the sports field.  Twelve elders were duly planted and are now really looking quite resplendent with their fresh leaves and gradually thickening stems.  At break time children love to run in and out of them still respecting their relative fragility, but at other times they sketch or measure them. 
We started to look more into this graceful and generous deciduous native tree.  We found out that its name comes from the Anglo-saxon ‘aeld’ which means ‘fire’ and the hollow stems were used as bellows to blow air into a fire.  Its folklore is a little mixed as it was thought that if you burnt elder wood you would see the devil (don’t drop those bellows!) but if you planted elder by your house it would keep the devil away.    
It is a beautiful tree to look at although it doesn’t dominate the landscape as an oak or horse chestnut would and it tends to grow in scrub, hedgerows, wastelands and in woodlands.  Sometimes they are found near rabbit warrens or badger setts, as animals distribute the seed via their droppings.  Because it is a native tree, it supports a wide variety of wildlife: the flowers provide nectar for insects and the berries are eaten by birds and mammals.  Dormice and bank voles like to eat both the berries and the flowers.  Moth caterpillars feed on the elder leaves including the white spotted pug, swallowtail, dot moth and buff ermine.
The elder tree grows only to a height of around 15m and lives up to about 60 years.  It has quite a short trunk (bole) with grey-brown furrowed bark.  The leaves are pinnate with 5-7 oval and toothed leaflets – they really don’t smell very nice if you touch them either which is strange when the cordial from the flowers is so lovely and sweet.  The flowers look almost flat and can be really large – up to 30cm across, are creamy in colour and smell absolutely beautiful.  The elder tree which is in our pond is also right outside the Year 4 classrooms so the fragrance from these trees floats through their windows on spring breezes.  In late summer and early autumn each flower develops into tiny, purple-black berries (pollination by insects).  These sour berries are beautiful in jams and sauces, which we make with other fruit from our edible hedging and allotments.  In the winter the elder tree can be identified because the twigs smell unpleasant, are hollow or have spongy white pith inside.  However, the flowers, berries and leaves are all poisonous with the flowers and berries needing to be cooked before being eaten.  Isn’t it strange that a tree can have two extremes of fragrance – sweet blooms and unpleasant twigs and leaves.  It made us wonder.  We found out that the leaves have a distinctively unpleasant odour that repels insects efficiently that they used to be hung above horses in stables to repel them. Shakespeare was referring to this when he coined the phrase, “the Stinking Elder.”

Did you know that flies pollinate elder trees more than bees?  


Friday 19 May 2017

Wicor Orchard



A walk around our grounds today showed just how much has happened in the last few weeks.  Our blogging had stopped while we were concentrating on our SATs tests, but they have finished and we are back outside.

The orchard was where we stopped and serenity was all around us but this was a site walk so we didn’t dally…well not too much. 


The large amount of yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor) which was flowering away amongst the grasses and which has spread magnificently since last year really hit us first.  Yellow rattle is a native semi-parasitic grassland annual and was sown 3 years ago when we decided to get a wild flower meadow going in the orchard area which had been laid to grass.   We knew when the Year 6 children sowed the three years ago the yellow rattle would be difficult and unpredictable to germinate but we needed it to take for its parasitic nature.  Creating the wild flower meadow has been a two-stage process with the yellow rattle being sown and germinated first, to reduce the grassland and allow other wild flower seed mixes thrown alongside to germinate.  Yellow rattle is so important for reclaiming grasslands and helping wild flowers take hold; it is now part of the Natural England’s (2009) plan to diversify grasslands and support native wildlife.  Our yellow rattle looked beautiful laying in large swathes of translucent gentle yellows across the entire orchard.  Other wildflowers have also taken hold with corncockles, red clover plus the beautiful and fragile vetches with their pea shoots twining with and spreading through the grasses. 

Within our heritage orchard the many trees are now showing small apples starting to form and grow.  Amongst them is our one quince tree whose soft pink blooms are so heavily and intoxicatingly scented.  This quince tree threw us a bit of a mystery last year – we had one quince growing, and we nurtured it, watching, waiting for that moment ready to harvest it.  When the time came… it had gone. Where it went we shall never know!

If you had read our earlier blogs you would have stumbled across one where we described trying to transfer some mistletoe seeds from our Headteacher’s garden onto the branches of trees within our orchard.    Well, the exciting news is that we think one of the seeds might have taken.  This one little seed has brought so much excitement.  We will watch and wait.

Badgers are still using our orchard as a busy thoroughfare with three new paths having been pushed under the fencing and cut through the long grasses.  Their trails criss-cross through the orchard with the occasional area of flattened grasses as if they have stopped to admire the view too and under the scots pines you’ll find their latrines are still being used.
 
The Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris) which shelters our storytelling area is now looking lustrous.  We decided to take a closer look at this tree as it is one of only a few evergreen trees on the site and has lots of new vertical growth shoots at the moment.  We found out that the needles on young scots pine trees grow longer than those on older trees, it is only one of three native evergreens (juniper, yew and Scots pine) and the only true native cone bearing tree of the United Kingdom.  It is also the only native conifer grown commercially for timber in the UK.  Mature trees can grow up to 35m and live for up to 700 years.  We used our maths knowledge to work out the height of the tree using both a ratio stick and then again with a clinometer and we think ours is approaching 30m tall – it is certainly a beauty.  Close observation showed the bark to be a scaly orange/brown towards the top of the tree (or crown) and darker brown bark at the bottom (or base) of the trunk, which we weren’t expecting, and it develops something called plates and fissures as it gets older.  The twigs are hairless and browny-green with its leaves being needle-like and a bluey-green.  They are also slightly twisted with pairs of needles on the short shoots and will stay on trees for 2-3 years with the old needles turning yellow in September or October when they are shed.   These trees are monoecious which means that both male and female flowers grow on the same tree, and our pictures show the male cones.  Scots Pine trees use wind pollination, and once pollinated the female flowers turn green and develop into the brown cones we are used to seeing, maturing the following season so there are always cones of different ages on one tree.  The really mature cones have a raised circular bump at the centre of each scale and are a grey-brown. 

We also found out that after the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 10,000 years ago, Scots pine, spread northwards from Europe into Britain and reached a maximum spread about 6,000 years ago. Today the Scots pines cover about 170 km² which is just over 1% of the 15000 km² original area - most of this is in the Caledonian forest which takes its name from the Romans, who called Scotland ‘Caledonia’, meaning ‘wooded heights’.

A bit more digging around and we found out that the young pine needles are used for their antiseptic effect, and that the essential use from this tree can be added to baths to treat fatigue and inhalers for chest complaints!


 

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
Unnerves his strength, invites his end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Woodnotes"








Friday 14 April 2017

What did my child do on Spring Grounds Day?

Outside learning at Wicor
At Wicor we have a bespoke environmental curriculum which has seasonality at its heart.  Although the children work outside throughout the year we have four dedicated, focused environmental days which are linked to their seasonal learning.  On these days the whole school decamps outside and learns about the world around them whether it be looking at habitats, planting seeds or digging over the compost.  And so last Thursday, over 440 children spent the day outside in our grounds which are looking fantastic as they burst into new life in the inevitable way nature arranges.

Tadpoles in the shallow warm water
It was a sight to see.  Everyone had come togged up with their scruffs ready to get their hands dirty and every year group had their learning pegged into the curriculum in some way - this isn't paying lip service to the fad of outdoor learning.  This is rigorous and embedded.  The children take it seriously, especially as we had just had a week centred on the film A Plastic Ocean where we all questioned ourselves over the use of plastic and how we could make small changes in our own lives which might have larger consequences over time.

The sun shone and it was a glorious day on the south coast of Hampshire.  A variety of activities were undertaken.  Year 5C planted some seeds for a trial for the RHS - these will eventually provide data for a survey on bees.  Year 5T class were planting out some magnificent 12 foot specimen holly trees donated by Hilliers; huge holes were dug and no children were lost inside, and everyone learnt about watering in.  They will now need to learn the slog of nurture after the excitement of the planting otherwise these trees will be lost.

Year 4 were extra busy under the watchful eyes of Miss Ray and Mrs Wright.  Throughout the day some children updated their journal in the orchard sketching the new leaves and blossoms on all of the fruit trees.  Five Kew packets of native wildflower seeds have been sown in there as well extending the wildflower meadow that's beginning to take hold.  Terracotta pots were also planted in the allotment with trailing petunias donated by Garsons.  Cornflowers were direct sown into the long borders with a link to life cycles.

Navelwort in the dry stone wall
Year 6 were undertaking a host of activities from planting broad and edamame beans ready for bean salad in the summer, to learning how to transplant tiny seedlings of navelwort into our dry stone wall which resides next to our small, but perfectly formed pond.  In addition to this, they were sketching the plants within these area which ranged from bluebells to red clover, dicentra to bay flowers, elder blossom to pulmonaria.  However, the fascination of watching the tadpoles and pond skaters soon took over and mesmerised twenty 10 and 11 year-olds for long periods of time.  It could have been stopped and everyone could have 'got back to work' but how often do children these days have the luxury of just sitting and observing the nature around them?  It reminded me of the days I used to go stickleback hunting.  The children sat keenly hoping to see our resident frog as well but were only rewarded by the occasional plopping as it hid in the roots of the pond plant life.


Flowers on the bay tree
Year 3 were deep into their compost and also planting up a special white calendula being grown for RHS Chelsea this year.  Various investigations were going on regarding the make-up of the different soils, including one just out from our 3rd generation compost heap.  Horse manure was being dug into some sections of the allotment and green manure seeds scattered elsewhere.  PH testing proved fascinating for children and they used this information to top up beds around the school.  The calendula seedlings look strong and healthy, have been planted in their recycled milk bottle pots, and have been placed back into the polytunnels for nurturing. Lines of carrots and radish were sown into the raised bed outside their classroom.  Again, this is such an important part of their learning - you can't just plant something then walk away.  Persistence, resilience, patience, commitment - key life skills are required and cultivated.


A bombeliidae
Year 2 were planting out the hollyhocks which have been grown from seed at school in the polytunnels..  Every child planted one - that's 65 in total!  They were placed into one of the beds, where we look particularly at seed dispersal, and watered in.  Careful handling had to be learnt, although the plants are quite robust and will provide a spectacle later in the year.  The different parts of the plants were identified and what the plant needs for successful growth were learnt.

Year 1 had the fantastic job of looking for different habitats as the start to their next enquiry where they will produce an estate agent's guide to attempt to persuade insects to 'buy' a home.  They will need a deep understanding of each animal's needs as you wouldn't want to place a creature next door to its main predator, nor would you sell a woodlouse a home somewhere hot and dry.  So holes were dug, stones were lifted, bark was peeled, leaf litter moved slightly, birds were spotted, ladybirds hunted and spiders were sighted....always following the Country Code of replacing animals and respecting their habitats.  They also sowed Zinnia 'purple prince' for their outdoor areas, and planted chitted potatoes in the allotment...in straight lines - metre sticks were used.


Elder blossom
Year R went on a spring walk, observing and collecting specimens to talk about later.  Their beds were dug over, flowering plants dug in and broad beans sown.

In a day and age where so many articles and headlines scream at us about the younger generation being 'The last child in the woods' it doesn't take much for them to revert and become enthralled by the world around them.  They just need to be give the chance, the encouragement and the time.





A fern unfurling






Tuesday 7 March 2017

Garsons Rose Propagation

During the last few months we have benefited hugely from the expert help given by our local garden centre, Garsons Garden Centre. On this visit it was our community volunteers who were lucky to be given expert help on how to take hardwood cuttings from our roses. The session was attended by Tommy and Callum of Garsons in Titchfield.

Callum is their expert on roses and is responsible for the entire rose stock including ordering at Garsons. There is not much Callum cannot advise on from the right rose for the right place to how to care for your roses. When ordering roses there are many different factors to consider: colour, fragrance, what will stand up to pest and diseases and what new lines may catch the eye of the customers.

Whilst Callum was here he demonstrated how to take hardwood cuttings from our roses. We all took several cuttings using roses we have had growing in the grounds for around 5 years.  All we needed to use were pots, compost, secateurs and hormone rooting powder. It was very much a new experience for many of us and as you may see from the picture after just 3 weeks the outcome was extremely positive!

While he was working, we asked Callum a few questions:

Q  Who are your main suppliers of roses at Garsons?

A  David Austin and Henry Street.  Both have a great reputation for healthy and strong stock.

Q  When feeding your roses what fertilizer would you recommend?

A   A good tomato feed always gives good results.

Q  What rose would you say has the best fragrance?
 
Gertrude Jekyll.

Q  If a customer was looking for a rose that was tolerant to shade what would be your top choice?

A  Madame Alfred Carriere.
 

 

Monday 6 March 2017

Signs of Spring by Flo Downing

The cold frost of winter has been blown away and spring has started to bloom.  Everywhere you look you can see signs of new life, from the bright trumpets of the daffodils to charming goldfinches with dashing bright flashes of yellow plumage.

Many think that spring is here when they go to their local farm and see lambs frolic in green paddocks. However, there are plenty of other signs of spring, often occurring much earlier in the season.  For example, in March all the queen bumblebees who have survived the wicked winter months now have the chance to greedily hunt gorgeous flowers filled with rich pollen and build hives full of subjects.  

As you may already know, many of our winged friends will migrate to a warmer climate for winter but as if driven by an unstoppable force, the minute that half decent weather shows up they’ll all fly back from their charming holiday.   Some of the first birds to arrive are chiffchaffs, sand martins and wheatears but as spring progresses they are followed by swallows, swifts, nightingales, warblers and cuckoos, resulting in orchestra of magnificent birdsong.

Bluebells will often emerge from their winter slumber and emerge from their bulbs, first as small green stems, but it is not long before entire forests are carpeted in the gorgeous blue flowers.  Another common sight is the primrose, a quaint little flower that pops out its delicate yellow face throughout April and May.

One of my personal favourite signs of spring is the mass, uncontrolled surge of frogs and toads.  They are all heading back to the pond where they themselves were born.  Soon thousands and thousands of spawn will be laid.  The frogspawn can be seen as a large jellied clump, and toad spawn is in straight and carefully placed lines.  Soon tadpoles will emerge. 

Flo Downing Year 6

Wednesday 15 February 2017

Feathered Friends


Feathered Visitors to Wicor Primary School, Portchester

Even though it is winter, and very cold over the last few weeks, we have been getting lots of bird visitors to our grounds.  In particular, we have a resident green woodpecker which we regularly see in our woodland area.  We decided to investigate green woodpeckers, Picus viridis, a little more and found out that they stay in the UK all year round.  We were really surprised to find out that they only reached the Isle of Wight in 1910 as that’s only a small jump across the water from us.  However, apparently that was the bit that green woodpeckers weren’t that keen on.  We were also really surprised to find out that they have weak bills as we often hear our woodpecker tapping away in the trees but they prefer soft dead wood when excavating for a nest.  We think our green woodpecker is female as we can’t see any red under her bill.   The green woodpecker likes a deciduous habitat and short grass, both of which we have lots of.

It really is a beautiful bird giving flashes of colour amongst our dark winter trees at the moment.  It has bright green on its upperparts, with a pale bellow underneath, a bright yellow rump and red on the top of its head.   Apparently, it has a nickname of ‘yaffle’ because that’s what its call sounds like – we hadn’t noticed this and will be listening out carefully over the next few weeks to see if we can identify it by its call before we see it.

In the summer, green woodpeckers like to eat ants (adult, larvae and eggs).  In the winter, when there aren’t so many ants around they will eat other invertebrates, pine seeds and fruit.  Green woodpeckers usually spend most of their time feeding on the ground, although at school we mostly see them in the trees – maybe there are too many children on the ground!   We have left lots of rough soft patches of grass around our woodland area and in the orchard for the green woodpecker to encourage them to feed and breed at school.  The Picus viridis has a long sticky tongue which can fish for ants deep in the nests for as long as an hour and will keep going back to the same ants’ nests again and again for weeks.  We were alarmed to read that some green woodpeckers will raid bee hives, so we have spoken to our beekeeper and he has reassured us the bees in our six hives are quite safe.

A fun fact is that ‘Professor Yaffle’, the wooden character in Bagpuss, was based on it.  It also has English folk names of rain-bird and weather cock as it is supposed to bring on rain.

At Wicor we have tried to make sure that we grow plants that are native and really helpful to wildlife especially in winter.  We have many holly bushes with berries on which the birds love (they also roost in the holly bushes as the spiky leaves give protection from predators) and positively encourage ivy, (Hedera helix), as it extends the season for our bees and has rich berries for the birds.  It also has really thick evergreen foliage which gives the birds shelter.   Along our main drive and in our coastal bed, we grow (and propagate) tuft forming grasses like Festuca gautieri which has fluffy seed heads through autumn and winter.  Lots of mini-beasts will hide in the grassy heads which the birds love too.  All around our grounds we have planted many, many native trees (120 last winter along including an elder grove and a nuttery) and we have lots of sorbus.  The elder, rowan and hawthorn trees around our site are really popular with birds providing lots of berries well into the cold, dark days.  Along one of our fences we have grown cotoneasters and pyracantha, which have lots of berries like the sorbus.   Among our many trees we have lots and lots of silver birches which are really beautiful especially the catkins and silver bark.  They are special trees as they keep producing catkins with seeds in during winter and many birds eat from them as they dangle from the branches.

During our grounds days we always think of the wildlife, and we harvest excess seeds all through the year.   We use fallen cones from our scots pine trees as structures for fat balls and pack them with the nutrient-giving seeds collected earlier.   We will be carrying on stuffing these cones for the rest of the winter, helping the feathered visitors to our grounds survive the cold.




Germinating Mistletoe


Germinating Mistletoe
We decided it would be interesting to try and grow some mistletoe at school, and as our Head Teacher had successfully cultivated some from seed at his home he helped us with the process.  February and March also happen to the best months for doing this.
Before we implanted the seeds, we decided to find out a bit more about this plant.  Mistletoe, Viscum album, is an evergreen plant and bears lots of cloudy white berries from winter to spring as well, which will help the wildlife in the grounds during the cold months.  If the mistletoe doesn’t produce berries, but flowers instead then it is probably masculine.  We also found out that mistletoe is semi-parasitic and lives on the water and nutrients from a host tree.  We thought that mistletoe would kill the host tree, but apparently it does not.  By introducing mistletoe to our grounds, we will be increasing biodiversity.
According to data from the National Mistletoe Survey cultivated apple trees are the favourite host for mistletoe, followed by lime and hawthorn – all of which we have at Wicor Primary School.  We also learnt that gardens are the favourite place for mistletoe to grow as there is more light than in woodland. 
From this information, we decided that our orchard, which has 15 heritage apple trees in and three lime trees would be the perfect place to cultivate mistletoe.  So on a dull, grey and wet February Friday we went to the orchard with Mr Wildman, our Head Teacher, with mistletoe berries from his garden.  He told us that we needed to rub the white berries onto the exact part of the tree where you want it to grow.  We thought that you might have to make a cut to rub the berries into, but according to Mr Wildman, it will stay where you rub it, as the inside of the berry is very sticky and it sticks to the healthy bark surface.  We thought it was really clever that birds help with the dispersal of mistletoe seeds because they get stuck to their bills. 
When the birds wipe their bills on tree branches, to remove the sticky substances, they are dispersing the seeds.  Blackcaps, Sylvia atricapilla, are really good at this and they are visiting the south of England even more these days which will mean more mistletoe!
Our research also told us that these berries are loved by birds including mistle thrushes Turdus viscivorus, redwings Turdus iliacus, waxwings Bombycilla garrulus and fieldfares Turdus pilaris.  Unfortunately, mistle thrushes are not very good at helping with the seed dispersal of mistletoe as they eat the berry whole and excrete the seeds missing the branches!  Mistletoe is also a really good habitat as well as a food sources: the mistletoe marble moth uses the leaves as a place to lay its larvae, and is a priority species.
 We will be keeping an eye on these seeds and hope to see if they have germinated later in the season.
The photo opposite shows a mistletoe seed just as it germinates.

Wicor Frosts


Winter Frosts




At Wicor Primary School we are encouraged to go outside in all types of weather, so a week of hard ground frosts (when the temperature of the ground falls below freezing point 0ºC/32ºF).


The cold weather has not stopped us from observing our grounds and finding out what happens to some of the animals in it, although the frosts do not seem to have bothered the triceratops in our Jurassic bed.  



It has certainly been very beautiful in the mornings, with many of the plants looking like they are wearing jewellery.  We have lots of grassy habitats at Wicor and although frost does not damage the grass, we found out that pressure on frozen grass causes the leaves to fracture and then ruptured cells can seriously damage it.  Knowing this it is amazing that our grass survives seeing as it has hundreds of feet stampeding on it every day!  We also compared a holly leaf to a frozen one under the microscope to try and see the differences.


Our pond has frozen over twice in the last week and in the past we have broken the ice thinking this would help.  However, new research by the conservation charity ‘Pond Conservation’ has shown that most wildlife in garden ponds will survive a pond freezing over if it is left alone.  Apparently, breaking a hole in the ice makes very little difference to the oxygen levels in the water and plants will also carry on photosynthesising under the ice.  We have therefore decided to just net the leaves this winter to stop them falling into the pond and turning into silt – this is a mucky job and so there are plenty of volunteers.


During the rest of the year, we regularly dip in the pond to see what is living in there, so we know we have long bodied dragonfly nymphs, smooth newts ‘Lissotriton vulgaris’, stags horn snails, common toads ‘Bufo bufo’ and common frost ‘Rana temporaria’, as well as pond skaters and water beetles.  Damselflies are also regular visitors. 


So this week we decided to investigate further and find out what happens to the frogs in our pond over winter.


Apparently, all frogs and newts (amphibians) in the UK must hibernate to survive the winter and frogs do this by lying dormant in compost heaps, leaf litter, underground tunnels or log piles.  So we have provided lots of winter habitats around the pond for our frogs including log piles all stuffed with fallen leaves.  There is also a large bug hotel made of pallets which they might like to overwinter in, and two small decking areas, where we sit and sketch, that provide additional shelter.   All of these areas let the frogs hide from predators and enter hibernation.  This is when their body functions slow down to a minimum and their bodies freeze.  Most creatures cannot survive this so the frog is the greatest toughie!  Sometimes frogs will prefer to overwinter in the bottom of the pond, where they will bury themselves in mud, and the temperature is slightly warmer.  They will be fine there unless the pond freezes over for a long period of time.  As ours has only been frozen for four to five hours at a time we think the frogs will be fine.


We were surprised to find out that frogs might even come out of dormancy to forage in milder periods of weather, so we will be on the look out for that in the next few weeks.



Friday 27 January 2017

Badger behaviour in winter


Meles meles by Freya Y5
Badger 'Meles meles'

Habitat:  Badgers can be found in deciduous woodland, farmland, some urban gardens and coastal cliffs.  So they like to come into our grounds at Wicor Primary as the variety of areas (woodland, pond, orchard, field, scrub) supports their food chain.  

During our research on badgers, we found out that they do not hibernate in the sense that hedgehogs do.  Like many other animals and birds, badgers eat as much as they can during the autumn, laying down a lot of fat under the skin and increasing their weight by up to 6%. This helps them to survive through the winter. They do not hibernate but spend the coldest weather sleeping in their setts, living mainly off their fat.

Badgers are omnivores ( meat and plant eaters): they like to eat frogs, slugs, beetles and wasp grubs with earthworms being their main food, this can be hard to source when the ground is often frozen. . In the autumn we have a lot of food in the grounds for the badgers as they will forage for windfall apples, blackberries and wild cherries among other things.  Coming into the spring badgers also like to eat young rabbits and bluebell bulbs, and we have a lot of the latter.

Winter also plays a part in their breeding season with badgers mating between February and October but the fertilized egg does not start developing until December. This is called delayed implantation. Badgers usually have two to three cubs in a litter, and these are born mid-January to March which is about eight weeks after implantation. Badger cubs stay underground until they are 8 weeks old and at 12 weeks old they start the process of weaning.  

At Wicor we have had badger activity on site for as long as the school has been built here which is over 50 years.  We often see the trails they leave across the site to their setts in a neighbouring undeveloped plot of land, and if you follow the trails you would find three parts of a wire fence which they have pushed up to go between the school field and the field next door.  There is also a hole which has been pushed under a fence into the orchard.   There is an entrance to a sett on the field in a big mound of earth with evidence of scraping around the entrance which we think shows that they are going in and out.  The field next door has a network of at least three setts and we are supporting the community battle to save this undeveloped piece of historic countryside.  We even wrote a letter and went to the Fareham Borough Council at a hearing to appeal - after all we are the next generation and we want green fields not new houses.  But back to the badgers...we regularly find tufts of black and white wiry hair caught on low lying branches and on the fence that divides the school from the field.   We also have badger latrines that appear all over our orchard and we often put our feet in them accidentally while walking through the maze path in the orchard...but we find this really funny.  We think it is really clever that the badgers dig out latrines and this shows how clean they are.  We also found out how to tell the difference between male and female badgers: males can usually be distinguished from females by their broader, more domed heads, fuller cheeks and thicker necks.  The females also have shorter broader ones.

As part of our seasonal learning we will be keeping an eye out to see if any bedding material is pulled out of their sett entrance to air, which badgers do in the winter.